


nightmare treatment

by Love_Me_Dead



Category: 5 Seconds of Summer (Band)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gore, Hospitals, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-17
Updated: 2015-10-17
Packaged: 2018-04-26 17:40:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 32,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5013904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Love_Me_Dead/pseuds/Love_Me_Dead
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Michael doesn't show up to a meeting; Luke lives a nightmare</p>
            </blockquote>





	nightmare treatment

**Author's Note:**

> okay! disclaimer is that this work is heavily based off [another work](http://glassamilk.livejournal.com/tag/t:%20a%20dream%20is%20a%20wish%20your%20heart%20makes) that i read for the first time when i was like, twelve. that work is based off the superman comic "for the man who has everything" so there's a lot of inspiration here  
> there are scenes of blood and gore and black sludge but you can easily skip them over if you're more comfortable with that! any scenes with gore are generally nightmare sequences and yeaah  
> this work is unbeta'd but that will change! enjoy!!

_Michael wakes up to a loud bang resounding around his house. It startles him to wakefulness and his first thought is a gunshot or some idiot throwing a party but it’s a Thursday night and if the cool thing to do is to interrupt someone’s sleep before they have work with a rager, Michael will see to it that they end up in pain. But he decides to go outside to the backyard, just to check, to make sure it isn’t Federer getting up to something._

_In just his boxers, he gets out of bed and grabs a baseball bat from its spot against his desk, mindful that it’s up to him to keep things safe since his parents are out for the night. A blast of hot air hits him the moment he opens the back door; he scrubs at his eyes against the bright light and he knows it shouldn’t be this bright out, not at three in the morning._

 

The three of them are in a waiting room, Ashton reading some magazine and Calum scrolling through his phone while Luke stares into the distance.

The pretty secretary looks up at them. “They’re ready for you,” she says before her polite smile turns into a frown. “Aren’t there four of you?”

They exchange a glance, the three of them. Calum and Ashton are sitting together on one couch, Luke alone on the other with Michael’s absence palpable.

“Yeah,” Luke says. “He’s probably overslept.”

“Oh,” the secretary says. “Would you like to wait for him?”

“Call him,” Ashton says, as though the three of them hadn’t sent him massive amounts of texts in the last ten minutes.

Luke sighs, cursing Michael under his breath as he stands from the couch and heads into the hall to find their missing member.

 

_Michael puts a hand up to shield his eyes from the light, blinking as he adjusts to it and wonders if the paparazzi got into his backyard but the light is too orange. He notices that a chunk of his backyard is missing and it’s been replaced with a steaming crater. What kind of awful prank did someone think this was? He would talk to his parents about moving when they came home. God, it stinks; the tang of sulphur assaults his senses._

_Orange light pulses out of the crater as Michael takes a few cautious steps towards it, painfully aware that he might be photographed in his boxers with his hair flat and that this might be some creepy kidnapping. He grips the baseball bat tighter, deciding that the crater was caused by some idiot playing with fireworks._

_Michael scans the yard for anyone else, for any snickers. “Hello?” He calls out. He’s got a meeting in the morning, he doesn’t have time for these games._

 

Three unanswered calls later, Luke gives up and clicks his phone off before he walks briskly back to the meeting. Their team had come out and asked them in and Luke was asked again to call Michael, see where he was, and he was unsuccessful in coming up with an answer. He goes back to the meeting, opening the door and he’s met with the hopeful looks of his bandmates and the executives.

He shakes his head. “He’s not answering his phone. And I tried his parents, too, but they aren’t home.”

“This is a very important meeting…” One of the executives says.

Luke doesn’t want to be a diva popstar and throw a fit over this but he sort of does. Michael is late and they’re acting like it’s Luke’s fault or his problem. “His parents are out, he probably forgot to set his alarm and they aren’t around to wake him up,” he says, sitting down next to Ashton. “Let’s just start the meeting. I’m sure he’ll stroll in any minute.”

 

_Nobody answers Michael’s call and he sighs. “This isn’t funny,” he says firmly in case the culprit is hiding and keeping quiet. He rolls his eyes, transferring his baseball bat to his left hand now that he’s sure he won’t have to use it, and he steps towards the crater in his yard, wondering how he’s going to explain this to his parents. Well, at least he’s got the money to pay for it to be repaired._

_Michael regrets not grabbing his phone, to snap a photo of it for insurance purposes or to use it as a flashlight as he nears the concave spot in his yard. The smell of sulphur gets worse and he plugs his nose with his free hand. The glowing light is coming from the burnt ring of grass around the hole and he peers inside it, trying to listen or see for something, but it seems empty._

_“Stupid assholes,” he mumbles, wishing that he could force the perpetrator to pay instead of paying for it himself. It must have been a prank. Whatever, he thinks, it’ll make a good story while they’re waiting for the meeting to start tomorrow morning._

_There’s a sudden deep buzzing noise and Michael has no time to react before something slams into him, knocking him to the ground hard enough to wind him. He tries to scramble back up, for a moment thanking their personal trainer for making him do all those crunches, but a sharp, burning pain courses through his chest as something penetrates the skin around his ribcage, leaving him writhing and gasping. He’s acutely aware of a weight settling on his chest that wasn’t altogether metaphorical._

_“Fuck,” he manages before his eyes go wide and his breath is cut off. He makes a strangled choking noise as the same penetrating tendrils force their way down to his belly and to the center of his chest, rendering him almost useless. He can’t breathe. Blackness starts to invade his vision as he tries to regain control, tries to rip the thing from his chest but he can’t. There’s something squeezing inside of him._

_There’s something squeezing at his heart._

 

By the time the meeting has ended and all of his calls and texts have gone unanswered, Luke begins to worry about Michael. He’s not the most punctual of people, often forgetting to turn on his alarm or mixing up the AM and PM setting and it was even worse if his parents weren’t there to be a secondary alarm, a safety net to make sure he keeps up a good standing with the business side of the band. It makes him worry that his phone didn’t wake him, or that he was ignoring it. Michael got bored the easiest: he didn’t have siblings to catch up with and even if they were pissed off at each other, Michael always answered Luke’s calls.

On his way out, Luke checks one last time with the secretary and again with the receptionist in the main lobby if they’ve seen Michael. They confirm they haven’t and he thanks the both of them before he grabs his coat and follows the other three towards a taxi.

“Nothing?” Ashton asks when they’re settled into the taxi.

Luke looks down at his phone again. He had left it on vibrate during the meeting, though he normally sets it to silent, just in case Michael responded. He shakes his head, seeing that the only new message is from his brother.

“He’s probably just hungover,” Calum shrugs. “You know how he is, his parents leave for one day and he probably played Call of Duty and drank too many coolers.”

The three of them share a collective chuckle as Luke tries to push away the feeling that something is completely wrong here.

“He probably forgot,” Ashton puts in. “Head stuck in the toilet or something.”

Luke chuckles again. “Still, it’s weird he hasn’t been answering my calls.”

“We’ll give him shit when we find him still asleep,” Calum reassures. “Don’t worry so much.”

Luke shoots off a quick text to Michael’s mum, asking if they’re home yet while Ashton tells the taxi driver to stop at Michael’s house. He receives an answer from Karen in seconds, saying that they weren’t home yet but they were leaving soon so they’d be home in about an hour. “’M not worried,” Luke mumbles, completely unconvincingly even to himself. He ignores Calum and Ashton’s glances at that.

The taxi pulls up to Michael’s house, looking the same as it did the first time Luke showed up for band practice with nervousness storming inside of him because Michael still didn’t like him and he could tell. The three boys pile out, Ashton paying the taxi driver; if they found Michael passed out inside they would be staying for a while to make sure he would be okay and to give him shit.

“If he’s asleep, I swear to god,” Luke mumbles as they go to the front door and Calum knocks on it. They wait with bated breath to hear Michael’s footsteps come thundering down the stairs or shuffling from the living room. All they get is the quiet breeze shuffling through the trees and the distant sounds of traffic.

Ashton starts pawing through his pockets for his keys and Luke curses himself for forgetting his own. They have keys to each other’s houses for situations like this and forgotten instruments and general “banding” as Ashton put it.

“I’ll check the back,” Luke says, too jittery to stay still while Ashton tries to identify Michael’s house key on his chain.

Calum nods and heads around the other side of the house while Ashton locates his key and unlocks the door. Luke passes through Karen’s garden with hardly a glance, though he does note that it’s perfectly kept and he wonders if the woman he’s known for years has a green thumb he’s never bothered to notice or if Michael was paying for a company to keep the garden pristine.

Luke unlatches the wooden gate and pushes it open, mindful to turn around and make certain it was locked again before he advances. “Michael?” He calls and he wrinkles his nose. Something’s been burning. If Michael got so drunk that he set his yard on fire, Luke will see to it that he’s castrated.

He rounds the corner of the house to see Michael lying in the grass on the opposite side of the yard. He sighs, the worry ebbing away as he sees Michael isn’t dead or anything, just an idiot. “Hey, idiot,” he says, advancing towards him. “There was a meeting today, did you forget?” He scowls when he doesn’t get a response. “Get up, you dumbass, we’ve been worried.”

He stops when he spots a baseball bat on the ground a foot away from Michael’s hand. Something isn’t right.

“Michael?”

He breaks into a sprint towards him, stopping only when he comes up to him to find him lying flat on his back in nothing but his boxers.

“Calum! Ashton!” He yells as he kneels beside Michael. “Guys! I found him!”

Michael’s eyes are open, bloodshot and the pupils are pinpricks as his green eyes dart in every direction. Hours’ worth of morning dew have collected in his bright red hair, which is flat over his forehead in a way Luke knows means he just woke up.

Luke’s hands hover over him, ready to shake him awake until he notices that there’s something on Michael’s chest – _in_ his chest. It’s a rubbery looking black mass situated over Michael’s heart, quivering like a heartbeat, with long black tendrils spread out like snaking veins, visible underneath his skin and pulsing in time with the main pod. It’s literally making Michael’s skin crawl.

Even in horror movies, Luke has never seen anything like it and he isn’t a doctor but he knows that whatever it is isn’t good. It makes his stomach churn as panic bubbles up in his chest. “Mikey?” He chokes out, prodding Michael in the shoulder where there aren’t any tendrils. “Mikey, please, are you okay?”

The only response he receives is the clattering of the gate and the back door as Calum and Ashton finally show up. Luke jerks his head up to look at them as they run across the lawn to join him.

“What’s wrong with him?” Ashton asks.

“Oh my God, what _is_ that?” Calum exclaims.

Luke wants to cry and panic because he doesn’t know and it’s scaring the absolute shit out of him. He shakes his head. “I don’t know but we need to get it off of him.”

When he glances back up at them, the command for one of them to call an ambulance dies on his tongue as he watches Ashton take out his phone.

Ashton speaks with the emergency operator while Calum and Luke stare in silent disgust at the _thing_ on Michael’s body. Luke winces because he can hear it moving, quiet, wet squelches as it beats and forces itself further into Michael’s skin. Luke wants to tear it off, take the baseball bat and smash it, but he knows he would probably hurt Michael and that’s the last thing he wants to do.

From the distance, Luke can hear approaching sirens and he reaches down and gingerly brushes at Michael’s hair. “What the fuck happened?” He mumbles.

Michael doesn’t respond.

When the paramedics arrive, a group of a dozen hospital workers in hazmat suits storm Michael’s yard and they load him into a bio-bag. They keep their hands away from the black mass on his chest while the other hospital workers herd Luke, Michael and Calum into the driveway to interrogate them. Luke gives half-answers even though they’re most interested in him since he’s the one who found Michael – he’s too interested watching the others load Michael into an ambulance. The bag he’s in is airtight, a long tube threaded through the top and connected to a respirator. Ashton questions it and the staff assure him it’s for everyone’s safety.

For their own protection, they’re not allowed to ride with Michael and they’re instead loaded into a second ambulance, squished together in the back with nothing to occupy themselves except each other. The way the staff is speaking makes it seem like they’ve dealt with it before and it’s comforting because it means if they’ve dealt with it, they might know how to remove it and Michael will be okay, but on the other hand it’s terrifying because he’s never heard of anything like this before.

Ashton handles informing Michael’s parents and it nearly makes Luke cry because Ashton cries and the three of them fold their hands together and grip on tight.

 

When they get to the hospital, they’re snuck in through the back to avoid arousing any suspicion and they’re met by a brigade of nurses who are wearing masks over their mouths and noses. One of them steps out of the crowd.

“We need you to come with us, we have a few questions.”

They’re lead down a labyrinth of hallways to a private wing and Luke notices every member of staff on their way is wearing a mask and gloves, which isn’t altogether unusual but he’s never seen every single one of them wearing a mask at all times. They finally get to a hallway and they’re herded into separate rooms, for their own protection, which scares the absolute shit out of Luke.

A doctor greets him inside the room, wearing a mask and some of the nurses are still in hazmat suits. Luke doesn’t respond to the pleasantries – he’s too scared.

“What’s going on?”

The doctor sighs. “We’ll let you know in due time,” she says. “For now, please cooperate with these questions.”

Luke sits when she motions to, casting an uneasy glance towards the door. He doesn’t want to be alone.

She rattles off a list of premeditated questions with an accent. What time did he find him? Did he speak? Was there anyone else around? Luke answers the questions easily and watches the doctor scribble the answers down as he fidgets nervously. This isn’t how he imagined his day going.

“There’s just one more question,” the doctor assures him with a polite smile since he guesses she can sense how anxious he is. “Did you make contact with the mass?”

Luke frowns. “I’m sorry, what do you mean?” Through his anxiety, he can’t puzzle out the medical jargon.

“Did you touch it?”

Luke shakes his head. “No.”

“Did you touch the affected?”

“Michael?”

“Correct.”

Luke can still remember the feeling of his skin under his fingers, the way his wet hair felt. “Yes. His shoulder and his hair.”

The doctor’s eyes go wide behind her glasses and she stands up, barking out orders to her colleagues that are too rapid and too medical for Luke to understand. Startled by the abrupt change in atmosphere, Luke gets to his feet as well, just in time for some of the nurses in hazmat suits to grab his arms and drag him out to the hallway while he struggles against them, yelling and finally starting to cry.

He’s pulled into a room further down the hall, decorated with plastics and stainless steel and he whimpers when the door slams shut. It’s locked and two of the workers clad in hazmat suits grab at his clothes, trying to pull his shirt and his pants off.

“What are you doing?” He asks, his voice teary and terrified.

“Sir, please, this is for your own protection,” the worker says with their voice masked by the suit. “Please let us do your jobs. You may be contaminated, we need to dispose of your clothes.”

Luke tries to wrest out of their grasps. “What the fuck is going on?!” He yells, wishing he could get a concrete explanation.

“Please,” the worker says.

“No! Tell me what’s going on!”

“I can’t do that, sir, please, the sooner you cooperate, the sooner we can move you out of quarantine.”

The thought of being out of this room, locked up with nothing except the workers, is too appealing to refuse and Luke relents. He pulls his clothes off, trying his hardest not to cry as the workers shove them into a red bag labelled ‘combustibles’ because he _likes_ those clothes and something is wrong with Michael and he doesn’t know what. He stands before them, feeling horribly exposed and thinking that this is a horrible irony. Most of his fans haven’t seen him shirtless and now here are these workers, nameless and faceless, seeing him completely naked.

Luke is soaked down in freezing cold water and he cries all the way through it and when it’s over, he’s wrapped in a warm, sterile blanket that smells like nothing and he shivers. They lead him into a second room that he hadn’t noticed, handing him a blue cotton jumpsuit wrapped in plastic.

“Once you’re dry, you can put this on,” the worker says, their voice regretful like they sympathize with Luke. “We’ll have a friend of yours bring your own clothes later.”

Luke shivers worse, his tears almost returning as he notices the room they’ve placed him in is completely windowless and sterile, only a bench, bed and toilet. “You’ll remain in quarantine for twenty-four hours. There’s an intercom by the bed.”

“What –” Luke is cut off by the door closing and there’s a hissing sound as it locks, airtight.

Luke blinks at the locked door and he stands there, dripping wet and naked as he looks from the door to the jumpsuit in his hands.

 

Luke settles in for a long night once he’s put on the jumpsuit and he sits on the bed right beside the intercom, hoping it’ll buzz or hoping that the doctor he was questioned by will come by and tell him this has all been a mistake. He wants his phone and he wants to call his parents and he wants to call Michael and find out how he’s doing. He finally presses a button on the intercom and demands to the nurse that he speak to Calum and Ashton. It takes too long until the intercom buzzes again.

“Luke?” Ashton’s voice crackles through.

Luke lets his breath out. “Hey,” he says softly. “Are you guys okay?”

“Yeah, we’re okay,” Calum says. “What about you? Where are you?”

Luke leans his head back against the wall. “I’m in quarantine.”

“Why?”

“Are you okay?”

Luke smiles a little at the worry in their voices, the way their words overlap a little in their concern. “Yeah, I’m okay. I just touched him and they’re worried I’m contaminated or something.”

“Oh, Luke,” Ashton sighs.

He doesn’t know what to say. He rests his head against the cool wall and shuts his eyes, wishing that he could be near his boys. “Have you guys seen him?”

“Not yet,” Calum says. “They won’t let us.”

“Maybe he’s in surgery,” Ashton offers.

“Yeah,” Luke says in response. The intercom is too loud because he’s so close to it and he just wants to be close to them.

“What are we supposed to do?” Calum asks.

Their lives are ruled by schedules, days they’re booked in the studio and days they have to wake up at ungodly hours to be on a morning TV interview and days they have to be at the airport three hours before their departure. And now they’re down a member.

“We’ll be okay,” Ashton says. “We’ve got to go. They want us to fill out some paperwork.”

“Okay,” Luke says like it isn’t making his heart beat too fast.

“We’ll talk to you later.”

Luke nods as the intercom crackles to silence and he sighs. It’s going to be a long twenty four hours.

 

Luke manages to sleep away most of his quarantine despite the bed being about as forgiving as a wooden plank. In the moments where he’s conscious, he thanks his overly busy schedule for allowing him to sleep pretty much anywhere and, if undisturbed, for great lengths of time. It feels like forever until he gets to speak to Calum and Ashton again, the intercom waking him as they tell him it’s been five hours and then there’s a long gap where he assumes they’ve fallen asleep. Finally, the airtight door hisses open and he rubs his eyes as he sits up while a doctor walks in, the same one he was interviewed by.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Hemmings,” she says. “I’m Dr. Bartlett.”

“Has it been twenty four hours?” Luke asks as he slides out of bed. It doesn’t feel like it. It feels like eternity but it also feels like it’s only been a few minutes.

“No, your friends threw a fit about you being in quarantine,” she says. “And if you were contaminated you’d show signs of it by now. The whole twenty four hours is just cautionary.”

Luke bites back an insult, yelling, or anything, as she motions for him to follow. He’s lead down the halls, wondering if anyone is a fan and is snapping pictures of him in the ugly blue jumpsuit and he worries that someone will and it’ll end up everywhere that they’re in hospital, that Michael isn’t okay. He’s lead through the halls, on a small trip up the elevator, to a private waiting room where Ashton, Calum and Michael’s parents are seated.

Immediately, he rushes to Ashton and Calum and he cuddles into them.

“Nice suit,” Calum teases.

“We brought some clothes, don’t worry,” Daryl says, handing over a bag full of clothes for Luke.

He smiles as he peers inside, glad that they didn’t forget boxers and socks. “Thank you.”

They fall silent, their gaze falling on Dr. Bartlett and Luke drops the bag at his feet in favour of squeezing Calum and Ashton’s hands.

“Michael’s case is an extremely rare one,” she says and Luke doesn’t want to notice Daryl and Karen clutching each other’s hands.

She sits and takes off her glasses, sighing. “You must understand that the entity that has attached itself to Michael is not of our world and we’ve only dealt with it three times before. Once in Thailand, once in Austria and once in America. We’ve never dealt with it attached to someone of Michael’s status.”

“What is it?” Luke asks.

“That’s a little harder to explain. I’ve been present at all three cases and studying it once the host to which it attaches itself passes is very difficult without it attaching to a potential researcher.”

“Once the host passes?” Karen squeaks, her grip with Daryl’s hand tightening.

“Can’t you just cut it off?” Calum asks.

Dr. Bartlett takes a breath. “Yes, we believe that it stays with the host until they pass away. And cutting it off isn’t so easy. Any time a foreign body approaches, it stops his heart. If we are to forcibly remove it, we risk killing him as well. We also worry that if we remove it, it will immediately try to latch onto a new host and as such, everyone who comes in contact with him is at risk.”

They’re all silent and Luke’s heart is beating too fast and he doesn’t want to be here.

“What does it want?” Ashton asks with a shaky voice. “Like… his blood?”

“It acts similar to a parasite,” she says. “It thrives off serotonin and the fast oscillating gamma rhythms produced by the human brain during deep sleep. REM sleep.”

Luke wants to burst into tears and he wants to go home and go to sleep until this is over.

“Can we see him?” Karen asks, starting to sniffle.

Dr. Bartlett nods. “But before, I must warn you that he’s in rough shape. Physically. It may be disturbing.”

She hands out gloves and masks to them, assuring them that it probably isn’t contagious but it’s just a precaution as she leads them to the room across the hall from the waiting room. This wing of the hospital is deserted and Luke is thankful as Dr. Bartlett swipes a key-card through a machine by the door and it beeps. She gives them a glance before she opens the door, the six of them going into the room.

Inside the room, they’re greeted with the sound of a steady heart monitor beeping and the hiss of a respirator. Karen immediately lets out a sob and Daryl steers her back out the door; they can try again when they’re calmer. Michael is laid out on the bed on his back, arms by his sides in a way Luke knows he hates to sleep with a large Plexiglas case that’s latched to the bed with a few heavy duty locks. There are several holes through which the tubes are threaded with two-way seals, airtight, to deliver him IV fluids and lead the oxygen nubbins to his nose. From outside the glass, a pair of rubber gloves hangs near his head.

“The incubator is just a precaution,” Dr. Bartlett says. “For now.”

“Until he’s dead,” Luke says bluntly. It doesn’t feel like it’s real as he approaches the case, Calum and Ashton staying planted where they are. Michael looks just like he’s sleeping with a white mask over his eyes and he looks more relaxed but Luke chances a look at his chest, at the mass that throbs in time with the heart monitor. There are more tendrils than there were before, looking like they’re racing towards his hips and his collarbone while they slither and pulse, irritating the affected skin.

“Does it hurt?” Ashton asks, stepping up beside Luke. “He’s bleeding.”

“We do not believe he can feel anything. Or that he’s aware of anything that’s happening to him,” Dr. Bartlett answers. “During normal REM sleep, we experience sleep paralysis so that we do not accidentally hurt ourselves while we’re dreaming. We believe he’s experiencing just that.”

Luke isn’t sure if he’s allowed to touch the glass or reach in and stroke Michael’s hair again like he did earlier, only this time through a layer of latex and a thicker layer of rubber.

“All in all, it’s a very gentle attack,” she says. “Our staff is calling it ‘the black mercy’.” She sighs as she goes over, checking the heart monitor and the respirator. “Unfortunately, we are unable to contain the bleeding. If we get too close to the entity, it goes into survival mode and it’s our worry that it would take too long to stitch him up before he dies completely. Transfusions may become necessary if we don’t find a solution within twenty-four hours.”

Luke feels like throwing up. “How close to a solution are you?” He mumbles quietly, half-hoping that she won’t hear and won’t have to answer his question. He doesn’t want to know.

“Nowhere near, I’m afraid. We just don’t have enough data. We’re effectively flying blind.”

Luke lays his hand on the Plexiglas.

“Is there anything you can do?” Ashton asks. Calum has gone silent and his face is stark white as he sinks to the floor near the door, head between his knees.

“We have our top staff testing theories currently. Other doctors are being flown in as well.”

Luke turns back to Michael, just in time to watch a tendril make an awful squelching sound as it spreads from Michael’s chin up to his cheek, displacing the skin.

“I’m going to go find his parents,” Calum says quickly, standing up and quickly exits while Ashton makes a disgusted sound at the sight.

Luke turns and looks back after Calum, sort of wanting to follow but he doesn’t want to leave Michael. He wants to stay in case something changes.

“How long do you have to find a solution?” Luke asks.

“Around five days,” Dr. Bartlett says.

His hand curls into a fist against the Plexiglas. He wants to touch Michael, he wants him to wake up.

“Can we stay here with him?” Ashton asks.

“I don’t see why not,” she says with a shrug before she motions to the gloves. “You may touch him anywhere that is clear of tentacles and be mindful not to go within two inches of the black mercy. I’m going to go speak with the other doctors about any progress.”

Ashton lays a hand on Luke’s shoulder and they nod silently.

“Is there anything I can get you?” She asks softly.

Luke shakes his head and Ashton replies with a quiet, “No, thank you.”

She nods. “I’ll be back soon, hopefully with good news.”

She exits, the door beeping again as it locks and Ashton pulls around a second chair. They’re left in silence with the steady sounds of Michael’s heartbeat, hands clutching together in search of any comfort.

 

Michael wakes up to the sound of the television and the sound of the hood fan buzzing in the next room.

He wakes slowly and blinks, dazed and still sleepy from his nap as he rubs his eyes. He sits up and looks out the window, where there’s snow falling gracefully and he wonders if they’re in London because he’s never seen it snow in Sydney. They must be and he gets up, wandering towards the sounds of the kitchen to see who’s cooking and hoping that it isn’t supposed to be him, who fell asleep and once again burnt the bottom of a pot so bad they had to toss it out.

Standing at the stove is Luke, wearing one of Michael’s sweaters and a pair of his own sweatpants as he stirs something in a pot. It’s warmer in the kitchen than in the living room.

“Hey, love,” Luke smiles, stepping away from the stove and opening his arms. “You fell asleep, I’m glad you woke up before dinner.”

Michael cuddles into him and hums happily. “Smells too good,” he murmurs, still warm and drowsy from being asleep. “What is it?”

“Ham and pea soup,” Luke says. “It’s so cold in London, thought we could use a stick-to-your-ribs kinda meal.”

“Put sausage in there too?” Michael asks hopefully.

Luke nods, smiling and kissing his nose. “Yep,” he says. “Now get off, you’re crowding me. Grab bowls and spoons.”

Michael presses a quick kiss to his cheek, going to the cupboard and grabbing two bowls and he sets them on the counter while he scratches absentmindedly at his chest.

“I got rolls, too, can you get those? They’re on top of the fridge,” Luke says as he grabs a corkboard to rest the pot of pea soup on. He grabs the ladle to serve it and Michael pads over to the fridge, reaching up to grab the bag of store-bought rolls.

“You got the good ones, too,” Michael muses, reaching down into a cupboard for a bowl. They could keep them in the bag, save the bowl from going into the dishwasher, but having them in a bowl feels more grown up.

Luke finishes ladling soup into bowls, putting them on the table with spoons while Michael puts the rolls on the table. Michael sits and Luke grabs wine from the fridge and two glasses, expertly balancing them in one hand as he sits across from Michael.

Dinner is for the most part uneventful save for the argument over the last roll which they end up splitting to sop up the last bits of soup before they leave their wine glasses on the table while they do dishes. Their dishwasher in this tiny house has been broken for quite some time and since they’ve just gotten here for a break, they haven’t yet had time to call a repairman. It feels more domestic like this anyway, sidling up hip to hip with Luke while he washes and rinses and Michael dries.

Once they’re done, all the dishes back in the cupboards and the counters spotless and the leftovers put away in the fridge, they curl up together on the couch with a blanket over the two of them while the news plays.

“You okay?” Luke asks, setting his wine glass on the side table a little too forcefully, as always. Michael always worries he’ll break the stem.

Michael blinks. “Yeah, why’d you ask?”

Luke reaches up and places his hand over Michael’s, which is still rubbing absently at his chest. “You keep doing that.”

Michael grins. “I didn’t even notice.”

Luke pouts.

“It’s just a little sore, I must have slept stupidly when I napped earlier,” he assures, turning Luke’s hand so he can lace their fingers together. “I’ll be fine.”

“If you say so,” Luke says. “You’ll be okay to jam with Calum tomorrow? With your luck, it’ll twinge and you’ll jerk the wheel of your car and drive straight into someone.”

Michael laughs. “I’ll be fine, promise, you absolute ray of sunshine.”

It gets Luke laughing too and he leans up, pressing their lips together in a kiss that tastes like their dry chardonnay and like the warm ham and pea soup. It makes Michael’s head spin because it’s been forever, he lives with Luke, but he still isn’t used to getting to kiss him and touch him whenever he wants. He’s drunk on this power, so terribly that Ashton and Calum have teased about kicking him out of the band lest he start ravaging Luke on stage at some point. As though they’re any better.

They spend the night cuddled together, flipping from the news to _The Great British Bake Off_ and then finally a movie they switch to halfway through. They end up snuggled together under the blanket, using the excuse that it’s too cold in London and they generally run a little warm so their furnace doesn’t run as high as they need it to. Luke falls asleep just as Michael is starting to understand the movie and he doesn’t have the heart to force him back awake.

When the movie is over, Michael grabs the remote and clicks the TV off, carefully climbing off Luke and sliding his arms underneath his shoulders and his knees. He gingerly hoists him up, which is no easy task considering the blond is significantly bigger than him and Luke makes a small, sleepy noise of protest at being picked up bridal style before he wraps an arm around Michael. He manoeuvres them carefully up the stairs, not bothering with the lights since it’s a fairly easy path to their bedroom.

He deposits Luke onto the bed as gently as he can muster before he tucks him in, getting the warm duvet over him. Luke grabs it and rolls onto his side immediately. Michael smiles and strips down to his boxers, tossing his clothes in the general direction of their laundry basket; by the click of his jeans’ button on the floor, he thinks he missed.

Michael climbs into bed, sliding closer to Luke until his lightly throbbing chest is flush with the boy’s back and he wraps an arm around his waist. He buries his face in Luke’s soft blond hair, product left out of it for today and he inhales the scent of his shampoo and something else that he can only identify as _home_. He presses a feather-light kiss to the back of his neck.

“G’night, Lukey,” he murmurs.

Luke rolls over in his arms, wrapping his arms around Michael as well. He’s always been the big spoon. Once they’ve resettled, Luke kisses his chest, right above his heart. “Love you,” he mumbles.

Michael melts. He’ll never get used to Luke saying that. “I love you too,” he whispers, gripping him a little tighter.

 

Michael’s alarm goes off at five in the morning, the world still dark outside the window and he groans as he pushes his face into the pillow. Luke fumbles until the alarm goes quiet, rolling closer to Michael and prodding his shoulder.

“Get up, idiot,” Luke mumbles, his voice still rough and sleep-thick.

Michael whines like this is the worst thing to ever happen to him, snuggling further in to the blankets and Luke nudges him again. Even when they sleep, they sleep close together like there’s no room anywhere else, a habit learned from when they had to sleep together on tiny twin beds.

“Come on,” Luke whinges. “You have to be up and ready before they get here.”

Michael reaches over and wraps an arm around Luke’s waist, cuddling close. “’S cold.”

“Of course it’s cold, it’s five in the morning in December in London,” Luke grumbles. “Go get in the shower, I’m _not_ answering the door.” He shoves lightly at Michael’s chest and frowns when he flinches. “Are you still sore?”

“No, your hands are cold,” Michael says, kissing his cheek.

“Get moving, then,” Luke sighs, curling back into the blankets with his back to Michael. He stands and grabs a hoodie to tide him over for the freezing walk to the bathroom.

“I’m up, love,” he mumbles as he pads towards the door, the hardwood so cold it almost burns his toes. He wishes he had the thought to grab slippers but he would almost definitely forget them in the bathroom and Luke would trip on them after he woke up for good.

Once Michael showers, he returns to the bedroom to get dressed, wrapped in a towel and hissing quietly at the cold against his feet. He bundles up in a warm flannel and one of Luke’s shirts underneath, pushing his thickest beanie over his hair because there’s snow on the ground and it isn’t showing any sign of melting away soon. He pulls on a pair of black jeans, because he doesn’t know if there’s really any kind of pants that are warm and he isn’t really eager to wear long underwear.

He looks over at Luke, asleep again with Michael’s side of the bed unmade and part of his shoulder exposed. Gently, he tucks the blanket around his shoulder and presses a feather-light kiss to his cheek.

He pads downstairs, making sure he closes the bedroom door as quietly as possible so as not to wake Luke just as the doorbell sounds. Michael makes a beeline for the door, opening the door and revealing Calum, holding a sleeping Ashton bridal style and he gives a goofy smile.

“Guest room is all his,” Michael says as a greeting, letting them in from the cold and taking a minute to look over Calum’s shoulder to the snow outside. He’s always been more than a little infatuated with snow, having grown up in a place where it just didn’t happen and there’s a good two inches on the ground.

Calum nods and moves past him, the snow falling off his shoes which are undoubtedly a little more style oriented. He returns after depositing Ashton in the guest room, coming back downstairs as Michael heads to the living room to pack his backpack with a notebook before he goes to the kitchen to grab a few water bottles. Calum leans against the doorframe while he does it.

“How was the drive here?” Michael asks.

Calum shrugs. “It was five-thirty, the roads were dead.”

Michael goes over to the coffee maker, looking at the time on it. It’s still early, they have time before they usually leave. “Do you want coffee?”

“Yeah, but not the shit you make,” Calum quips.

Michael tosses him a look. “Ouch.”

“Luke’s a bad influence on you.”

“Let’s go to Starbucks.”

“You’re a white girl,” Michael says even though he grabs his wallet from the counter and opens it to check for Luke’s Starbucks card.

“Dude, it’s tasty,” Calum says. “I don’t keep vanilla syrup around and I don’t like coffee that doesn’t taste like carcinogenic chemicals.”

Michael laughs, finding Luke’s wallet and nicking his Starbucks card. “All right, all right, we’ll get you a vanilla latte with extra vanilla syrup.”

“And an extra shot of espresso,” Calum puts in. “I woke up at five this morning _and_ I carried my dumb boyfriend all the way from the car to your guest room, I deserve that extra shot.”

“How are you so peppy first thing in the morning without coffee?” Michael asks, leading him to the front door to grab a pair of black boots. He peers inside at the back of the tongue, checking the size because he’s grabbed Luke’s shoes in a rush too often and noticed when he’s too far gone to return home. He sits down in front of the door to put them on, Calum carrying his bag.

“I slept _really_ well last night,” Calum says.

Michael throws him a look. “Is that an innuendo?”

Calum smirks.

“God, no, I don’t want to know,” he says, standing and grabbing his keys before leading him out to his car.

They make it to Starbucks five minutes before it opens and they’re the first customers in, getting served by a pair of middle aged ladies who don’t seem to care that they’re famous. It’s nice and it’s refreshing from the lingering looks that they’re so often subjected to, which were kind of cool the first five times but quickly got him discomfited and feeling like he was in a fishbowl. Lattes in hand, they exit the store.

Under the guise of hanging out to jam and maybe come up with a few new songs, he and Calum go Christmas shopping early enough in the morning that the mall is deserted, which was mostly the point. They shop for their mothers and their fathers and Michael lets himself be dragged around while Calum hums and haws over something for Mali-Koa. They end up in a jewelry store, Calum looking at necklaces while Michael wanders towards the rings, passing all the diamond encrusted rings and scrunching up his nose at the amount of diamonds on some rings. They’d need to be ensured for the price they’re at and that amount of diamonds was simply boasting.

He finds himself with the simpler rings with smaller price tags, even though the price is completely irrelevant and he has all the money in the world to spend on a ring. He doesn’t want anything too flashy, he thinks that too many diamonds is tacky, and he isn’t even sure what Luke’s opinion on wearing diamonds is.

Calum appears beside him. “Looking at rings?” He teases.

Michael smiles, his hand resting on the polished glass display case. “Maybe.”

“Are you going to propose?”

Michael brings his hand up, rubbing at his nose to hide the wide grin at the thought of it. They’re young, he knows, but they’re perfect for each other. They’ve been together through everything; he knows that getting married is just the next logical step for them.

“Oh my God!” Calum says, too loudly – the employees all perk up and glance over. He clamps a hand over his mouth and repeats it quieter. “Oh my God.”

Michael can’t help the blush on his cheeks. “Maybe. I don’t have a solid plan yet,” he shrugs.

“You should,” he says. “I better be best man at your wedding.”

“Of course,” Michael smiles. “I’m just worried that if I propose, he’ll say no or something else…”

“Are you kidding me? Luke has been all eyes for you since the day I first met him, he would definitely marry you if you gave him the opportunity.”

Michael beams. “Which one do you think he’d like best?” He points to one. “I like that one, but is it too plain and it looks a little chunky…”

They spend the next half hour looking at rings for Luke specifically until Michael finally finds one that he loves and he buys it, alongside the other Christmas presents he has for Luke since he kind of enjoys spoiling him even though he could spoil himself any time he wanted.

They go back to Calum and Ashton’s flat, deserted, and begin wrapping their spoils so they can leave the ones meant for their boyfriends lying around without worrying that they’ll find them.

“Let’s make them dinner when we get back,” Calum says after he finishes wrapping his present for his mum.

Michael nods. “Yeah, I passed out while Luke was cooking last night,” he says. “So I probably owe him something.”

“In my experience, blowjobs work wonders.”

“Luke usually knows what’s up when I offer to blow him out of nowhere,” he says. “But yeah, let’s cook them something. Be domestic boyfriends and the best damn team of cooks ever.”

“What do you guys have around the house? We could do a Sunday roast or something.”

They sit on the floor, legs tucked under the coffee table as they keep wrapping and as they plan out the menu, Michael playing with the ring he bought for Luke once they’re done wrapping.

They’re on the way back to Michael and Luke’s, groceries in the backseat and radio turned up loud; in a way they did spend a portion of their day jamming, if this counts.

“I’m glad we did this,” Calum says, rolling the window down as he taps out a cigarette.

“So am I, it’s nice to just spend time with you like old times,” Michael says.

“We should do this more often.”

Michael rolls to a stop at a red light, smiling at him while he yawns. “Without the waking up so damn early part, though, maybe.”

Calum laughs. “It’s part of the fun.”

“Nah, but we should definitely do this again. I had a good time.”

“Me too.”

 

Luke spends a lot of time just watching Michael sleep. As disgusting as he finds the Black Mercy, he can’t take his eyes off it like a car crash or a horror film. He can’t look away from the tangled network of black tendrils, looking like some sort of shit out of a horror film with the rubbery mass and the blood collecting on the stark white hospital sheets. The tendrils are reaching to his back, grasping at his ribcage and he isn’t sure if a few of them stop or bury deeper into his body while others are close to the surface, displacing the skin as they reach up his neck. Most of them stop under his chin but one of them stays curled in his cheek, feathered and bowed like a fern; Luke wonders if he survives this how his appearance will be altered, how they’ll explain it away.

Luke stands and moves to the other side of the incubator, peering at the other side of his face where he knew there were a few tiny scars from the accident with the pyrotechnics. He searches them out and he wonders how PR will deal with this when someone notices Michael hasn’t tweeted in a long time. They can’t quite be honest, since the entire existence of the Black Mercy is kept under wraps by the government, not wanting to alarm the general public, and they don’t want to send their fans into a hysteric frenzy.

He sighs and leans his head against the glass of the incubator, wishing he could just wrap his arms around Michael.

The steady heart monitor picks up, beeping faster and Luke doesn’t look up this time. It happened for the first time a few hours ago, before he got changed, and it startled him to his feet and he wondered if he should call for one of the doctors that all flitted in and out of the room. He thought it was a good sign, a sign that Michael was overcoming the Black Mercy and waking up, but after a few seconds in tense silence and his eyes glued to the comatose boy, it showed that he was wrong. The second time, he wondered if it was a good sign and perked up. The third, he was able to ignore it.

Luke sighs, leaning down and just watching Michael. The mass beats at the same rate as his heart, his chest rises and falls at the same rhythm as the respirator. Part of him wishes he’d taken Karen’s offer to go home with them so he wouldn’t be here and focussing so intensely on it but he knows that if he had left he wouldn’t sleep a wink because he would worry the entire night away. It had promised some sort of maternal touch and some sort of relaxation but he couldn’t bear to leave Michael’s side.

“If he wakes up, he’ll need to know what crazy shit he’s gotten into,” Luke had told them.

He walks back around, keeping his hand on the glass as he flops back down into the uncomfortable plastic chair. He worried he might break it, actually, but it didn’t collapse under him so he was probably in the clear.

It’s so fucking quiet.

“It’s probably your own fault,” Luke mumbles, his voice rough because it’s the first time he’s spoken in hours. He doesn’t know what time it is, he hasn’t bothered to check it since the others left at eleven but all of this feels like eternity. “The universe punishing you for hating me all those years or something.”

He reaches up and presses his hand on the incubator again, tapping as though that’ll change anything. He just knows that Michael hates being disturbed when he’s sleeping, any noise and he usually wakes up unless he had a particularly wild night and Luke kind of expects the same to happen as he starts to drum his fingers on the glass. He could start singing, all off key and terrible, or he could request that Calum bring him a guitar so he could strum. He wonders if Michael could hear anything through the glass.

Luke surveys his hair, limp and the long part of his fringe is starting to fall into his eyes, fanning out across the electrical nodes. Hesitantly, he stands up again and pushes his hands into the thick rubber gloves as he glances warily at the Black Mercy, which doesn’t seem to mind or maybe notice his intrusion. He keeps the doctor’s warning in his mind as he moves his hands away from his chest and up towards his head, steering clear of the tendril curled in his cheek as he brushes a hand gingerly over Michael’s hair, pushing it off his face.

“You’ll have to get it cut soon,” he says quietly. “And dye it again. Your roots are starting to show.” He brushes his hair back gently, examining the way his naturally brownish hair faded into the bold red. “I kinda like it like this, though, with your roots showing,” he admits. “It makes it look like fire.”

He pauses. Nothing happens. Michael doesn’t miraculously wake up, unscathed from the Black Mercy and Luke doesn’t wake up from whatever nightmare this is.

“Never dye your hair black again or I’ll shave it all off,” he teases. “Probably wouldn’t matter, you’re already going bald.”

Luke sighs as he pulls his hands out again, rubbing his latex-covered hands over his face as he sits again. Same stupid unconscious idiot, same horrific mass on his chest. Nothing has changed.

The door beeps and clicks open and Luke turns, watching a new doctor walk in, one with a thick Russian accent whose name he couldn’t remember.

“Good evening,” she says. “Any changes?”

Luke shakes his head. “His heart sped up a few times,” he says, keeping the hope out of his voice because he knows it isn’t ground breaking, especially not since Michael is still passed out.

She frowns in disappointment, checking all of the monitors and instruments. “There’s good news.”

Luke tries not to perk up. “Yeah?”

“Some specialists have arrived and there’s a laser trial planned for the morning.”

It sounds promising but Luke tries not to feel hopeful. He can’t invest all of his hope into a solution, not when it might not work out. “Is it likely to work?” He asks.

“We’re not sure yet, it’s never been attempted,” she says, suddenly frowning and approaching the incubator.

Luke worries that she sees something, her trained eye spots something that Luke doesn’t and she sees that he’s dying, or something else terrible.

“You said that there’s been no change over the last few hours?” She asks.

“Yeah, no change,” Luke squeaks.

“He’s crying.”

Luke stands, pressing a hand to the glass as he finds an angle where the lights aren’t reflecting off the glass and obstructing his view of Michael’s face. His face is still the same, ashen and slack, but a slow, steady stream of tears have begun slipping from each eye and collecting in his ears.

The doctor grabs the clipboard, scribbling something down. “Perhaps we were incorrect with our theory of sleep paralysis,” she says. “If so, I imagine he’s in a great deal of pain.”

Luke can’t stop watching Michael. He’s only seen him cry a handful of times.

“Let me call the doctors monitoring his brain activity. They may have new information,” she says, striding over to the phone mounted near the door.

Luke rips his gaze away, taking a deep breath and trying not to think about the previous times he’s seen Michael cry. He doesn’t want to think about it and _God_ , he needs to sleep. He’ll go back to Michael’s house and maybe he’ll sleep in his room and maybe when he wakes up this will all be over.

The doctor appears next to him again. “It isn’t what I was expecting,” she says.

Luke looks at her, sucking his lip ring into his mouth.

“Fifteen minutes ago, he had a huge surge in endorphins. He’s not having a nightmare at all. He’s having a very good lucid dream.”

Luke blinks and looks back to Michael. “Why’s he crying, then?”

“You know him better than I,” she says. “What could make him so happy he would be moved to tears?”

_“G’night, Lukey,” he murmurs._

_Luke rolls over in his arms, wrapping his arms around Michael as well. He’s always been the big spoon. Once they’ve resettled, Luke kisses his chest, right above his heart. “Love you,” he mumbles._

_Michael melts. He’ll never get used to Luke saying that. “I love you too,” he whispers, gripping him a little tighter._

Luke shakes his head. “I… I don’t know.”

Shortly thereafter, the doctors insist he go home and he doesn’t fight it, instead calls a taxi and requests that they come around the back and they promise to be there in twenty minutes.

He stands and presses his hand to the cool glass again, looking down at Michael and trying not to fixate on the blood stains or the throbbing black mass on his chest. “I’m going to your house,” he says. “To sleep and stuff. Don’t do anything stupid while I’m gone.” He drums his fingers against the glass and watches Michael. His tears have since dried, leaving track marks where they ran and he wants so badly to wipe it away but he worries he’d get too close to the affected cheek and he’d accidentally kill his best friend.

“Goodnight,” he says quietly, waiting for a solid second for a response before he turns and walks out of the room.

He gets in his cab without too much trouble, sitting silently in the back and he’s thankful that the driver only asks for the address and nothing else. He generally appreciates chatty cab drivers, finding it much more relaxing than just sitting in the back twiddling his thumbs, but today he just isn’t in the mood. He glances back at the hotel as they pull away, shaking his head and sighing quietly.

What a mess.

He reflects back on his day while he fights to keep his eyes open, the warmth of the heater and the comfortable ambience of nighttime driving pushing him closer and closer to fatigue. He left his house this morning under the impression that he would be back tonight, he might go out for a drink with Calum or something but it wouldn’t end up that he was in a taxi back to Michael’s house after spending endless hours at the hospital.

The cab rolls to a stop and the driver repeats the number that’s been slowly climbing upwards during the drive home. Luke pulls some amount of notes out of his pocket and overpaying the driver because he only came up with twenties and he can’t be bothered to find a five or a ten. Whatever, he’s rich, he can splurge on tipping taxi drivers an inordinate amount.

He goes inside, finding the front door open and he steps into the quiet house, toeing off his shoes beside Calum and Ashton’s and walking in. There doesn’t seem to be anyone else awake and he isn’t going to test his hypothesis by calling out a hello or knocking on doors.

Luke scrubs at his eyes and makes his way to Michael’s “man cave”, knowing that the couch was comfortable enough to sleep on in there since Michael had picked it out to spend hours with his ass firmly parked on it so Luke knows he would pick the most comfortable one he could. He doesn’t make it past the living room, however.

“Hey, Luke.”

He jumps, turning around to see Ashton sitting on the couch in the living room with a mug in his hands. “God, you scared me,” he says, drawing a deep breath to calm his panicked heart.

“Sorry,” Ashton says. “C’mere.”

Luke pads over and sits down next to him, thinking that he could easily fall asleep on this couch, too. Anything vaguely horizontal at this point. “What’s up?”

Ashton sips his drink, which smells like chamomile tea and Luke wants a cup. “I called PR.”

Luke sighs and nods for him to go on. That sounds like an awful headache and he’s glad he wasn’t the one to do it.

“And the hospital liaison spoke to us before we left,” he says. “Basically, we can’t tell anyone about this. Like, knowledge of the Black Mercy can’t get out or else everyone will freak out.”

He nods. He wasn’t expecting that tomorrow they’d go to _People_ or something and tell them all about how an alien _thing_ had attached itself to their guitarist and he was in the process of dying unless the doctors could come up with a solution in four days.

“We can’t tell anyone.”

“No one,” Luke agrees before he knits his brows and the severity of the look Ashton is giving him sinks in. “Not our families?”

“No one,” Ashton says.

Luke had been hoping to call his parents tomorrow morning, let them know what was going on and maybe find them in the waiting room of the hospital just to cry on his mum’s shoulder for a little while. He sighs. “Okay. What do we tell them?”

“That he’s sick,” Ashton says. “PR tweeted from his account, pretending to be him and saying that he had man-flu or something. So if your parents ask, that’s where you are.”

He rubs his hands over his eyes. “Okay.”

They’re quiet for a long time, just the two of them on the Cliffords’ couch, surrounded by photos of Michael; a photo from when he was a tiny little kid and one on his first day of school and school photos throughout the years. They slowly change into photos that Luke knows his mum took of them onstage, bright lights making him look even paler and colouring his hair when it was stark white and Luke wishes he was anywhere but here with these circumstances.

“I’m going to get to bed,” Luke says, standing.

Ashton nods, looking up at him. “Where are you sleeping?”

“The man cave,” Luke replies, gathering some soft blankets from the closet. He grabs a couple of pillows, too, not wanting to add to his stress with a sore neck.

“Okay, goodnight.”

“Night.”

 

He’s awoken far too early from his uneasy sleep by a pair of warm hands on his shoulder and he blinks, opening his eyes and looking up at Karen. He extricates his arms from under the blankets he piled over top of himself to rub at his eyes, yawning.

“Good morning, love,” she says, sitting near his feet when he sits up. “How’d you sleep?”

Luke shrugs. “Good morning.”

She forces a smile. “I’ve made some breakfast,” she says. “They’re going to start the laser trial at ten.”

“Thank you,” he nods. “Is it okay if I have a shower before we go?” He’s slept over here thousands of times, he knows the house about as well as he knows his own house but he always asks anyway.

“Of course,” she says. “But eat something first, before Calum and Ashton drink all the coffee.”

Luke smiles, following her to the kitchen.

He feels marginally better after he showers for the fact that his stomach is full and showering makes him feel a little less gross and a little more human. He steals one of Michael’s shirts from the laundry basket full of clean clothes just outside his door, deposited there by Karen before she knew that her son was in the hospital, since he can’t bear to go inside his room just yet. He’s always been in there with Michael or with the knowledge that Michael will come back soon from wherever he’s gone and to go in there when Michael is slowly dying is unthinkable.

When they get to the hospital, Dr. Bartlett is stood outside Michael’s room with a fleet of doctors, one of them looking a little impatient. Luke glances at his phone and sees that it’s a few minutes after ten.

She motions for them to follow him down the hall. “We’ve moved him to a treatment room,” she says while they walk and Karen’s eggs and bacon flops uneasily in his stomach. “The procedure is akin to removing tissue with lasers, but since we can’t get close to it we’ll be operating it electronically.”

“How likely is it to work?” Calum asks, his hand groping to find Ashton’s. Luke wishes he had someone to hold his hand.

She comes to a halt outside one of the doors and turns to face them as soon as one of the other doctors unlocks the door. “It may work perfectly and it may not,” she says softly. “We’ve never tried it before.”

Inside the treatment room, Michael is laid out on the bed, Plexiglas case removed. Luke swallows when he sees that the amount of tentacles has doubled overnight and he wonders if he wouldn’t be better off in the hall while the trial. Above the table, a large mechanical arm is attached to a series of tracks on the ceiling, cables connected to a podium near the end of the bed. It all reminds Luke of the setup of a concert with cables everywhere and giant speakers hanging from the ceiling.

They’re lead into a corner furthest away from the bed and Dr. Bartlett starts to hand out dark tinted glasses. Luke slides them on and immediately feels like he shouldn’t be wearing them inside.

“We will be monitoring his brain waves and vitals,” she says. “If it all goes to plan, the laser will sever the connection while simultaneously destroying the mass.”

“If it doesn’t go to plan?” Daryl asks.

“It may have adverse effects on him,” Dr. Bartlett explains as another one of the doctors takes their place behind the podium of controls for the laser. “This is an untested method, we have no clue how he or the mass will react. It may be the same as trying to remove it with a scalpel.”

There’s a pause and Luke looks down at his feet, feeling vaguely nauseous, and he notices Daryl and Karen holding hands and Calum and Ashton clutching each other. He wishes Michael weren’t being slowly poisoned and killed by a fucking alien plant.

“Could it kill him?” Ashton asks quietly.

“I imagine so,” Dr. Bartlett admits.

Luke’s nausea triples and he leans against the wall behind him.

“We’re ready,” one of the other doctors calls out.

“Please refrain from leaving the room while the procedure is in progress. If it detaches, we cannot risk it getting into the hospital. The doctors are armed.”

Ashton reaches back with his free hand, offering it to Luke and he takes it without hesitation.

The doctor turns the laser on, the machine humming as it shifts to point directly at the black mass on Michael’s chest. The doctors babble medical jargon to each other, the sort of shit Luke can remember hearing on hospital dramas when he still had the time to watch them.

“Beginning phase one,” the doctor operating the laser says.

Three bright bursts pulse from the laser; something akin to the smell of burning toast fills Luke’s nose and he scrunches it, squeezing Ashton’s hand. When the doctors give their next go-ahead, they increase the intensity and the laser flashes again while several tendrils are severed from the main body. Luke stamps down his hope that he’ll get to see Michael awake soon and tell him he’s a fucking idiot.

The next time the laser fires, the Black Mercy contracts as it quivers and shoots out a new wave of tendrils deep into Michael’s skin while the machines monitoring his vitals beep frantically and loudly.

“His heart is seizing!” One of the doctors yells.

“We nearly have it!” The other one shouts.

Michael’s body arches off the bed in obvious pain as the smell of burning flesh assaults his senses. Tentacles continue growing from the main body and dark patches of blood appear under his skin, the machines screaming in warning as the doctors persist with the laser.

“Stop!” Luke screams, ignoring the way Ashton tugs him closer and tries to wrap his arm around his shoulder. “You’re making it worse! You’re killing him!”

Dr. Bartlett places a hand on his arm that he swats away, watching as the laser loses its charge and Michael’s body stills on the table, alarms still screaming.

The doctor deflates, sighing. “We almost had it,” he says regretfully.

“You were killing him! His heart was failing!”

“Mr. Hemmings, we could have restarted it,” Dr. Bartlett says to him.

Luke turns on her, a snappy remark sitting heavily on his tongue.

“Guys!” Ashton says, pulling away from Calum and rushing towards the bed.

Luke turns and follows once he sees. Michael’s eyes are open and they’re clouded and unseeing but open all the same and that has to be a good thing.

“Michael,” Luke says, touching his arm. “Michael, can you hear me?”

Michael’s gaze focuses on him, blinking slowly while his lips part and move, trying to speak.

“Mikey?” His hand reaches down and takes Michael’s, giving it a squeeze.

“Luke…”

The heart monitor flat-lines with a loud whine.

 

Michael and Calum enter the condo with Michael carrying a bag from the liquor store with two bottles of red wine, an expensive kind that Calum talked him into buying, to go with the meal that they were going to cook for their boyfriends. Ashton and Luke look up as Michael and Calum pull their snowy shoes off, laughing about how the drive home had been terrifying since it was still snowing and the grass couldn’t be seen under the white fluff and neither of them was experienced at driving on snow. (Michael also has a bag of gifts in the back of the car but those are all meant to be snuck in later when Luke isn’t looking and hidden in the room they’re using for general storage which Luke refuses to enter because of a soul-eating spider he saw in there a week ago.)

“Hey,” Luke smiles, reaching up over the back of the couch. There’s some entertainment news show playing underneath whatever music Ashton is playing.

Michael goes over and indulges him, pressing a kiss to his lips. “Hey.”

“How was jamming?”

“What’d you get?” Ashton asks, sitting up to peer at the bag in Michael’s hand.

Calum ruffles Ashton’s hair. “So much for a hello kiss.”

Michael laughs. “Jamming was good,” he says as Calum and Ashton share a peck. “And I got a couple of bottles of red wine for dinner tonight.”

Luke frowns. “Red wine for pizza?” He exchanges a look with Ashton, crinkling his nose.

“No, dumbass,” he chuckles, softening the insult with a kiss. “We’re going to cook you both dinner. All domestic and shit, cause you cooked all on your own last night.”

“Oh God,” Ashton says. “Get the fire department on speed dial.”

Michael rolls his eyes. “Come on, I can figure out a steak and some salad.”

“That’s what you say now,” Luke teases. “But in ten minutes you’ll be calling me in asking how you’re supposed to wash lettuce.”

“How were things here?” Calum asks, absently running his hand through Ashton’s hair which makes the older boy smile angelically.

“Mmm, good,” Ashton says.

“We mostly just chatted,” Luke shrugs. “Go start dinner, you got me up early and I’m starving.”

Michael chuckles. “Okay, whatever you say.”

He takes the wine and heads into the kitchen, pulling them out of the plastic bag they’d been placed in by a bored looking employee who didn’t even ask if he wanted a bag (he did, but he likes being asked). He grabs the corkscrew from the drawer and sets about uncorking them because he read somewhere that it was best to let red wine air out for a while before serving it. Or maybe his dad told him that. Either way, he followed the suggestion because otherwise he would set it aside and forget to serve it.

He looks out the window after he grabs the steaks from the fridge, watching the snow falling and thinking that it was odd. Snow didn’t often fall in amounts this great in London to the best of his knowledge: they must be setting a new record and he hopes that the flights aren’t affected when they want to go home.

“I’ll be there in a bit, Michael!” Calum calls. “Just gotta piss.”

“TMI,” Michael calls back as he grabs a steak spice.

So far it was a perfect day.

He grabs a knife to cut the steaks from their packaging, stabbing it into the plastic and pulling them out, wincing a little at the feeling of raw, cold meat on his hands. He figures they can make a quick salad and some mashed potatoes or something else rustic that feels like home.

Michael lurches forward suddenly, hand flying up to grip at his chest while his knees begin trembling. He braces himself against the counter, thinking that someone should call an ambulance – his chest pain is quadrupled from when it first began twinging last night. His heart constricts and hot pain fires through his body.

He can’t breathe.

Aware that he can’t breathe and therefore can’t call out to anyone, Michael leans heavily on the counter and begins moving towards the living room. His knees give out and he falls onto his back, the tightness and pain spreading up to his neck and down towards his hips. He can feel something moving, painful tendrils underneath his skin and displacing it. His dull nails claw at his chest as he tries not to panic when he can feel something move.

He can’t breathe. He can’t breathe. He can’t fucking breathe.

His vision goes blurry and dark around the edges and he arches forward, trying to find some position in which his lungs can get air. His hands are still scrambling at his chest, probably causing ugly red nail marks that Luke will kiss better later.

_“We almost had it.”_

Michael pushes with his feet against the floor, propelling himself towards the door but he doesn’t make it before another burst of pain wracks him and his lungs constrict in a silent scream.

_“You’re making it worse! You’re killing him!”_

He knows that voice. He blinks, trying to regain his vision.

_“You were killing him! His heart was failing!”_

His hands drop uselessly to his side as he tries to focus solely on that voice.

_“Michael?”_

He feels weightless for a moment before he’s aware of a weight on his chest and something on his arm.

_“Mikey?”_

He can only see harsh white light. He feels heavy. The light starts to fade.

“Luke…”

 

Michael comes to with another harsh white light and the sound of hushed murmurs. His head hurts.

A hand lands on his arm and he looks over, finding that Luke is sitting beside him in a chair with his face ruddy in the spots that indicate he’s been crying.

“Mikey?” He whispers, breaking into a watery smile.

He’s no longer on the kitchen floor or somewhere else. He reaches and takes Luke’s hand, looking to see that Ashton and Calum are there, clutching onto each other. He’s on an unfamiliar bed, propped up and he has no clue how he got here.

“Hey,” Michael breathes, reaching his other hand up and seeing a hospital bracelet on his wrist. “What happened?”

Luke moves up onto the bed and wraps his arms around Michael and he becomes acutely aware that his torso is strangely numb. “You’re at the hospital, love, you had an allergic reaction to some nuts.”

Michael frowns. “Nuts?”

“Yeah, the pecans you picked up at the store on your way home.”

Michael shakes his head. “We got wine, not nuts.”

Calum’s brows knit together. “Nah, we got nuts, you said Luke liked them in salad. You hit your head, though, so you’re probably fucked up from that.”

“I was so worried, Mikey,” Luke whispers.

Michael rubs at his back, pressing a kiss to his head. “I’m okay.”

When Luke pulls away, there’s something off. There’s something off about all of them, he notices as he scans over them but he can’t put his finger on it.

“You’ve had a hard day,” Ashton says. “Let’s get you home. No pecans, though. Who even knew you were allergic?”

Michael shakes his head. “Piercing,” he says, turning to Luke.

“What?”

“Your lip ring, you don’t have your lip ring.” There isn’t even a hole where the piercing would normally go.

Luke frowns. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

A sudden flash of pain shocks him, his eyes shutting tight as his hand comes up to rest over his heart. When he opens his eyes, Luke is beside him, the black hoop situated perfectly in his lip, right where it always is.

“Let’s get you home,” Calum says.

“I’ll go grab a nurse,” Ashton offers, disappearing from sight.

Luke strokes his hair while they wait for a nurse to come back and discharge him, pressing gentle kisses to his scalp. “You must be tired.”

And he is. His nervous energy dissipates suddenly as he hums quietly.

“We’ll get home soon and you’ll be fine. Don’t worry.”

Despite himself, he doesn’t.

They get home without incident, having a quiet dinner together and Michael skips on the wine because he still feels dizzy. Afterwards, Calum and Ashton express their intent to stay the night, citing the snow and darkness as reasons and Michael knows they’re just worried about him. Luke helps him upstairs to bed, helping him out of his clothes and pressing too many kisses to his chest, as though he knows it’s been hurting again, that it was what hurt the most when he passed out.

It’s a little early to be lying down for bed but Michael got up early and he was in the hospital, he deserves to go to bed early. Luke pulls Michael close, his head resting on the boy’s pale chest and he wonders again if he’ll ever get a tattoo and where, since he’s voiced his interest in getting one. His hands find Michael’s hair, carding through gently and relaxing Michael to the point where he doesn’t feel weird anymore. It’s probably from hitting his head or the adrenaline lingering from earlier.

“You scared the shit out of me,” Luke whispers. “I heard you fall and I came in and you’d knocked shit down so there was glass all over the floor. You were turning blue and I always thought that was just made up.” He tugs lightly on Michael’s hair, kissing his forehead. “I didn’t even know you were allergic to pecans.”

Michael sighs. “Neither did I.”

“I thought you were dead,” Luke admits after a few seconds of silence. He sounds terrified at the thought, which is partially comforting and partially depressing.

“And leave the best thing that’s ever happened to me?” He smiles, turning to look up at Luke. “No way.”

“You’ll never leave me?”

“Never.”

“Promise?”

“Absolutely.”

Luke leans down, pressing their lips together in the kind of heated kiss that has Michael wondering if he could manage his way through some form of sex. He sighs into it, trying his best to reach and pull the blond closer, the two of them shifting with their mouths attached to get a better angle. Michael pulls away when he runs out of breath, settling for resting their foreheads together and smiling.

“I love you so much,” Luke whispers, tilting his head in to peck his lips again.

Michael giggles. “I know, babe, we don’t need to fuck for you to prove it. I don’t feel well enough.”

Luke kisses his chest, smiling at him with his blue eyes shining in the darkness. “That’s fine. Let’s get some sleep.”

They pull the duvet over themselves, Luke prodding Michael to tell him he loves him back as they curl up, Michael’s head once again ending up on Luke’s chest right over his heart. Luke falls asleep in seconds, his breath evening out and his body going still, but Michael can’t seem to follow suit.

There’s still this feeling in his chest that something is terribly wrong and he can’t shake it but he readjusts his head on Luke’s chest to better hear his heartbeat. He smiles to himself and shuts his eyes, thinking that there can’t possibly be anything wrong; he’s got Luke here and Ashton and Calum are in the guest room and his parents are well. He’s got everything he could ever want. With that thought in mind, he snuggles down more seriously to go to sleep, his hand curling up against his chest.

Finally, he starts to doze.

His eyes fly open when he realizes what is wrong, his hand pressing against his chest as he goes stock still. He can hear Luke’s heartbeat through his chest and he can feel it against his ear, a steady pumping right against the side of his head. He can hear Luke’s heartbeat. He can feel it.

But his own heartbeat is missing.

Michael doesn’t sleep at all that night.

He spends the hours in the darkness, his palm over his heart like he’s singing an anthem while he waits and tries his hardest to _feel_ something. It’s impossible, he can’t be _alive_ without a heartbeat, at least not for this long. There’s just nothing in there, simply no movement. He does his best not to panic, not to wake Luke, but it’s terrifying and he wonders if he should drive himself back to the hospital.

Around six, just as Michael is beginning to think that his anxiety is caused by the fact he’s exhausted, his chest tightens and he becomes aware of a familiar fluttering under his ribs. He takes a relaxed, deep breath for the first time in the night, thinking that he should pay a visit to the doctor when it isn’t so goddamn early.

He gets up and goes downstairs, thinking that there’s no point in trying to get any more sleep when everyone will be up in a couple of hours anyway. He finds Calum in the kitchen, leaning against the counter with a steaming cup of coffee in his hands and they make eye contact, both of their faces turning puzzled.

“Good morning,” Calum says. “Do you feel any better?”

Michael nods. Apart from minor exhaustion from not having slept, he feels so much better. “Yeah. You okay?”

“Yeah, it just… it fucking terrified me yesterday.”

Michael frowns. “I’m sorry.”

Calum huffs out his breath and looks down at his coffee. “It’s fine, I don’t blame you or anything. You can’t help your allergies.”

“I know, but still.”

Calum continues staring at his coffee. “I found you, y’know. And I just screamed for Luke and Ashton even though my phone was in my hands.”

Michael listens.

“I just didn’t know what to do,” he takes a shaky breath. “God, you could’ve died because I’m too big of an idiot to call an ambulance.”

“I wouldn’t have died, Calum.”

“You were turning blue, Michael.”

He sighs and looks at him. “I know, but you called Luke and Ashton. They called for help and I’m fine now, I’m in one piece.”

Calum sighs. “Yeah, just don’t wanna live without my best friend is all. Don’t get hurt again until I’m not a piece of shit, kay?”

He smiles, going over to the coffee pot and pouring himself a cup. “Okay,” he says. He thinks that he should maybe abstain since his heart has been so fucked up but he didn’t sleep at all. He dumps some sugar into the mug and grabs the cream from the fridge.

“I’m mostly just pissed that we couldn’t cook dinner for our boys,” Calum pouts.

Michael laughs. “Well, we can make them breakfast.”

Calum smiles. “Yeah. What should we make?”

“Dunno,” he says softly, opening the fridge to peer in. “We don’t have a lot of fresh stuff.”

“Uh… eggs? We could make an omelet.”

Michael shakes his head. “Luke hates omelets.”

“Oh, right, the freak.”

In the end, after a good five minutes of banter, they decide to make pumpkin scones and fried eggs since they’re in England and it’s freezing out with snow on the ground.

“What do you want to serve with them?” Michael asks, wondering if they had any whipped cream or jam.

“Raspberry jam?”

Michael looks at Calum with confusion on his face. “Raspberry jam?”

Calum nods as he starts measuring flour.

“You hate raspberries.”

“What do you mean?”

Michael’s chest twinges and he reaches up to massage it with the hopes it’ll make it feel better. Calum rests a hand on his shoulder and his fingers are impossibly cold for having just drunk coffee.

“I don’t hate raspberries, Michael. You just hit your head.”

Calum’s grip tightens painfully on his shoulder and Michael tries to pry his fingers off but he doesn’t budge. He’s aware of a sound building in the peripheries of his hearing and his vision is beginning to blur. He pitches forward into the counter, grabbing it to support himself again. The noise he can hear is static, he realizes, white noise like his TV used to make when he was switching it from the TV input to a different one for video games.

A wet feeling spreads from where Calum’s hand is gripping his shoulder and he jerks his head over to look at it, seeing that there’s some kind of black fluid leaking from his shoulder and onto Calum’s stained hand and down his chest.

He cries out in a mixture of pain and fear as the static reaches a deafening volume, loud enough that he can’t hear anything else. Calum grabs his shirt and jerks him upright, so they’re face to face with Calum’s face-splitting grin filling his field of vision.

“You just _hit your head_ , Michael.”

A crippling pain rushes through him as he falls to the floor, blacking out.

 

“Michael, hurry up before it gets cold.”

Michael blinks and looks at Calum, who had hissed at him from the top of the stairs. He’s carrying a tray of scones and fried eggs with cups of fresh coffee balanced on it and various jams plated around.

“C’mon, Mikey, you’re acting all weird,” Calum frowns.

Michael balances the tray on one arm, glancing at his watch and seeing that an hour has passed since they first got the idea to make scones and eggs. An hour and he has no recollection of any of it.

“Michael, hurry, they’ll be awake soon,” Calum says with a whine in his voice and Michael has always been weak to his friends.

He comes up the stairs, carefully watching the coffees so they don’t spill. Calum grabs one of the plates, large and stuffed to the edges with the food they’ve prepared and balances two coffees in his other hand.

“You’ll be okay?” He asks quietly.

Calum nods. “Yep, left the door ajar.”

Michael nods and carries his tray to his room. Luke apparently just sat up in bed, tiredly scrubbing at his eyes as he looks up.

“Hey, good morning,” he says. “What’s this?”

“Breakfast in bed,” Michael smiles as he tries not to think about earlier and all the weird things that are happening to him that he can’t quite add up.

“What’s the occasion?” Luke asks, returning the smile as Michael deposits the tray on the bed and sits next to Luke.

Michael presses a kiss to his scruffy cheek. “We were going to make you dinner last night but you ended up cooking for us.”

“So you made breakfast instead?”

Michael nods, grabbing a fork and digging it into the perfectly fried egg. The yolk still looks a little runny and altogether it looks like something he should be able to put on Instagram.

Luke grabs a scone and spreads some jam on it. “You made this yourself?”

“From scratch,” he nods.

He takes a bite and hums. “God, it’s wonderful.”

“ _You’re_ wonderful,” Michael says, his thoughts now on the ring in the car.

Luke giggles and rolls his eyes, kissing him gently anyways. “You’re such an idiot.”

Michael’s heart twinges again but he thinks it’s in a good way this time.

 

Luke can’t focus for the seconds, the impossibly long seconds that drag into eternity, that Michael’s heart is stopped. The machine whines while the room is stifled in terrible silence, no one knowing what to do. The world crumbles until Michael’s body shudders and the line jumps and his chest expands.

The doctors sprang into action and shoved everyone out of the room, the door shutting in their faces as soon as they’re in the hallway. Karen and Daryl both started crying and Calum and Ashton clung to each other, pulling Luke into their huddle.

And they were lead back to a waiting room by a nurse and now that’s where they are, the minutes blurring together into one long string since Michael died. Luke is curled up in his seat, knees pulled to his chest because he feels inexplicably cold and Karen and Daryl are clutching onto each other’s hands like lifelines. Calum and Ashton have gone to get coffee and Luke feels like falling asleep, which he knows the coffee will fix but he isn’t sure that he wants it to fix his exhaustion. Maybe just sleeping through this ordeal would be better.

He reaches a hand up and scrubs at his eyes as his phone buzzes in his pocket. He looks at it and it’s his mum, asking where he is, when he’s coming home.

He looks at it. He doesn’t know how to answer without lying and he wants to go home until this is over but part of him won’t let himself go home. He wants to call her, hear her voice, but he knows that the moment she asks what’s wrong his voice will betray him and she’ll know.

“You can get home if you want,” Karen says from across from him.

Luke looks at her and shakes his head. “No, I’ll be fine,” he says softly. He wants to see a doctor, at least, before he gets home, just so he knows that Michael is okay.

“You’re sure?”

Luke nods and defeats his point by rubbing at his eyes again. Being this stressed is taking a toll on him, making him more exhausted than being on tour usually does. “He started crying in his sleep yesterday,” he admits quietly, looking at them as though they might know the answer.

“What?” Daryl asks.

“He started crying,” he says. “But the doctors said he had an endorphins rush so it’s not like he was in pain. And I can’t figure out why.”

“It was probably something about you,” Karen says as Calum and Ashton come back, handing Luke a cup of coffee. It has some cream in it.

“Me?” Luke squeaks, wondering if she means him in particular or the band.

She nods. “He loves you all,” she says softly. “You’re all practically family.”

Luke nods, ignoring the pang in his chest because now he knows that Michael wasn’t thinking specifically about him. He sips his coffee as one of the doctors appears in the door and he immediately regrets getting the coffee when he could potentially be going to bed shortly.

He seems peppier than the others, shaking their hands as he introduces himself as Dr. Harris. “I thought you may have gone home,” he says with a smile. “I’m glad to have found you.”

“Has something happened?” Calum asks. Luke notices that both couples squeeze each other’s hands and he balls his hand into a tight fist with his nails digging into his palm.

“Nope,” he says. “He’s still out like a light. But there is news.”

They perk up hopefully, hands relaxing.

“I have an alien specialist who’s been working on tracking the Black Mercy for some time now,” he says. “We can’t figure out where it’s from but we know that when it attaches to someone, it pumps them full of poison that causes their unconsciousness and it feeds off serotonin and REM brain waves and everything.”

Luke shifts impatiently.

“My doctor has been researching ways of getting it off,” he says.

“There’s a way?” Ashton asks, his voice too full of hope like an excited child and Luke braces himself for the worst.

Dr. Harris nods. “Two, actually. The first option is to let nature run its course: the host dies and the plant moves on.”

“The other option?” Daryl asks with a scowl present on his face.

“Well, the way that the Black Mercy operates is pretty complex, but as I’ve said, it just needs REM brain waves and serotonin and endorphins and everything to survive. It needs the host to stay in a deep sleep and have really nice dreams, so it taps into memories and things to access their deepest desires. Coupled with the fact the poison causes vivid hallucinations, it causes the host to feel like they’re living out their biggest dreams,” he explains.

Luke frowns. Michael _is_ living out his biggest dream.

“It’s an airtight defense, really, since the host _wants_ to stay in their dreams and the Black Mercy can’t be physically removed. However, if the host realizes that they’re dreaming then they can sever the mental connection. If they’re awake and aware of what’s going on, the Black Mercy must detach itself. The only issue, of course, is that they don’t want to wake up.

“We’re wondering if having familiar objects near him might help, things near and dear to him, since it’s been observed to help some comatose patients come back around,” he says. “Is there anything you can think of? Pets? Maybe his guitar, or something?”

Karen nods. “We have a dog and I’m sure the guitar might work.”

“Okay, if you could get those here as soon as possible, that would be very helpful.”

She nods and glances around at Luke and Ashton and Calum, an unspoken question of if they’ll join them. Luke nods, knowing that he will even if he’s the only one out of them who will.

“What’s the other option?” Calum asks.

“Forcing his dreams into a nightmare,” Dr. Harris says, shifting on his feet. “Basically, we load him up with opioid blockers, which will cut the flow of endorphins to his brain. Once the happiness dies down, we would give him a shot of something like adrenaline or maybe even LSD. If it goes perfectly, he’ll be so scared that he’ll wake up.”

Ashton frowns. “Why aren’t you doing this now? It seems like it would be a lot more effective than bringing his dog and strumming a guitar.”

Dr. Harris scratches at his neck. “Well, it’s dangerous. The plant may react by increasing its poison output to compensate and try to make him happy again. It could end up killing him faster.”

Luke shuts his eyes and leans his head into his hand. Even with the coffee, he still feels exhausted.

“We want to try the first option before we risk it,” he says. “But he’s getting worse. His vitals are slowly dropping, he’s died once… We have him on transfusions and if we can’t get him out of it by the morning, we’re going to have to give him the shot.”

Calum’s hand finds his back, resting there solidly.

“Let’s go get the dog,” Karen says with finality and strength that Luke is impressed by.

 

The three of them are in Michael’s room after a car ride that felt too hopeful, like they were investing too much into this plan and Luke just desperately wants it to work. Luke sits on Michael’s bed, which is way too soft and his pillow has stains from the multiple hair colours he’s had over the years. A patch of blue up near the top and a splash of purple in the middle.

Calum looks over the bookshelf while Ashton dug through a drawer. Luke finished hunting under his bed for anything else that might be useful a few minutes ago and he was working up the strength to look through his phone, his photo album, for any videos that might stir him. He’s hoping there’s something from some concert, something loud. Maybe he can dig up one of their first covers together.

His guitar is in its case and leaned up against his door so they don’t forget it. There are too many to choose from, too many electric guitars and too many old guitars he was keeping for nostalgia even though the neck looked seconds away from coming apart of the main body. They grabbed an acoustic that was in good shape.

Calum picks something off the shelf. “Think a children’s story would help?”

“He can sleep through anything, I doubt noise will work,” Luke mumbles.

“We have to try something, Luke.”

He sighs and nods, finally unlocking Michael’s phone. When he’d first gotten it, an upgrade from his old phone, he refused to give any of them the PIN because he knew that they would wreak havoc with it but he told it to Luke when they were rooming together in a hotel during tour, a quiet divulgence that Luke promised not to tell the others. He’s thankful for it now.

He opens his photo album, seeing many useless photos that he knows he received in text: pictures of Federer doing something cute, pictures of what he made for lunch and uninteresting selfies. From when they were on tour, there are pictures of the four of them all and there are some of Luke on his own, a row of candid photos that ends with Luke giving the camera the finger.

“What’d you find?” Ashton asks when all he comes up with is old schoolwork that Michael never got around to throwing out.

“Just his photos,” Luke answers, sighing as he handed the phone to Ashton. Maybe he’ll find something he isn’t seeing.

Ashton scrolls through them. “There’s lots of you.”

“I’m going back to the car,” Luke says. Technically, he would go down to the front hall and wait for everyone else because he was worried about being papped looking ridiculous outside. He grabs Michael’s guitar and heads down, leaning on the door as he waited for Karen and Daryl to find something else and get Federer set up for a trip to the hospital.

He opens his phone again, seeing that he still hasn’t responded to his mum’s text and he feels a pang of regret. He calls her. He shouldn’t but he has to or he might just go insane.

“Luke?” She asks when she answers on the second ring.

He draws a deep breath. “Hey,” he says. “Sorry I didn’t return your text.”

“I’ve been worried,” she says, as though she isn’t used to having an absent son. “There’s leftovers for you when you come home.”

“Thanks,” he says softly. “I – uhm, I don’t know when I’m coming home.”

“Is everything all right?”

Luke nods. “Yeah,” he says. His voice is too high. “Everything’s fine. Uh, it’s just – uh… Michael, uhm – he ran into some trouble.”

He can almost hear the frown settle onto her face. “Some trouble? Legal trouble?”

“No, he’s not well. He’s sick.”

“Oh, are you taking care of him?”

Luke leans his head back against the door. He wants to tell her the truth so badly, wants to tell her about everything that’s going on but he can’t. “Yeah.”

“Luke… what’s going on?”

He ignores her question. “I’ll talk to you later, okay? I love you.”

“I love you too, take care.”

He hangs up, feeling almost worse than he did before. He takes a few breaths and he just wishes this were over and maybe _he’s_ the one dreaming and this is some never ending nightmare from which he can’t wake up.

Karen appears in front of him, the sounds of Federer barking in the living room echoing down the hall and she doesn’t even ask, she simply wraps her arms around him.

“He’s going to be okay,” she says. It’s the tone of voice every parent has perfected, the one that makes you believe what they’re saying even if it feels ludicrous.

“He’s dying,” he chokes out and her grip tenses.

“He’s a fighter, he’ll get through this.”

Luke believes her despite himself.

 

They arrive back at the hospital not long after, carrying Federer in a crate and his guitar in its case as well as his phone. Dr. Harris asks one of them if they’d play the guitar, maybe a song that Michael often played or loved and all heads land on Luke, which was his worry. Luke hands over Michael’s phone as well, making sure he took off the PIN protection.

Dr. Harris chuckles as he takes it, letting Daryl and Karen back into the room with the dog. “Maybe his text tone will wake him,” he jokes.

None of them laugh.

“There are photos on there,” Luke says.

He holds the phone like all adults do, the equivalent of hunt-and-peck typing on a phone, as he opens the gallery to look at the photos, scrolling further than Luke got. “There are lots of photos of you,” he says, levelling his gaze with Luke.

Luke just shrugs. He’s too exhausted to deal with this. “We’re in the same band, it’s not shocking.”

“Is he your boyfriend?” Dr. Harris asks.

His ears burn as he takes the phone back. “Yeah, maybe in his dreams,” he mumbles sarcastically as he walks into the room.

Once they’ve sat next to Michael’s bed and played a mini concert for him, the three of them trying their best as Luke fumbles his way through all of Michael’s parts in songs, they go back to Michael’s house at the doctor’s suggestion. The drive home is silent because the guitar didn’t rouse him and neither did Federer yapping but they kept everything overnight, just in case it helped at some point.

When they get home, they part ways, Luke deciding to take Michael’s room tonight because it smells like him and he misses his best friend. He takes a shower (he rinses off since he’s too exhausted to do anything else) and crawls into his bed, wrapping his arms around a pillow and pushing his face into it. It smells faintly of hair dye and a lot like Michael’s shampoo and soap and he misses him desperately with a heavy weight on his chest.

The door opens and Luke sits up, flicking the lamp on to see Ashton. He looks exhausted and old beyond his years.

“Oh, sorry, I thought you were downstairs,” he says, lingering in the doorway.

“No, it’s fine,” Luke says. “What’s up?”

“I can’t sleep and I keep tossing and turning and I don’t want to wake Calum.”

Luke opens his arms. It’ll be nice to have company. Ashton pads over and climbs into bed, his body warm as they snuggle together.

“I’m so worried for tomorrow,” Ashton admits.

Luke shuts his eyes. “He’ll be okay,” he says quietly. “If he isn’t awake by the time we get there, they’ll do the second treatment and he’ll wake up. He hates nightmares.”

“He gets them all the time,” Ashton mumbles.

“What?”

Ashton looks at him. “Yeah. I noticed when we were on tour, he’d be up all the time and I made him tell me about it one night when I found him up.”

Luke blinks and tries to eliminate the guilt pooling in his stomach at the thought he wasn’t there for his best friend.

“Do you think he’ll die?”

His chest feels heavy again at the thought. He shakes his head. “Do you?”

Ashton sighs. “I don’t know… Part of me thinks that he might and part of me thinks that he won’t but then I feel like I’m just being too optimistic, you know?”

Luke nods. “Yeah.”

“I just can’t stop thinking about the band.”

“Don’t,” Luke says. “This is more important. Everything else can wait.”

“I know,” Ashton is cut off by a knock on the door.

Calum pokes his head in, looking sleep-rumpled. “Oh, I woke up and Ash was gone, I was worried that something happened.”

“Nah, we’re just here.”

Calum shuts the door and sits on the edge of the bed next to Ashton’s legs, searching for his hand and squeezing it. “Is everything okay?”

Luke nods. “Yeah, it’s fine,” he says, scooting towards the wall and feeling grateful that Michael has a giant bed. (Luke commented on it one of the first times he was here and he got a cheeky wink and a response you could fit more people on a bigger bed; he later found out he got the frame as a hand-me-down from his cousin and his parents supplied everything else.)

“We’ll get out of your hair,” Calum says, rubbing at his eyes and looking like he might fall asleep at any second.

“No,” Luke says, immediately terrified by the thought of sleeping alone.

They both turn to look at him, Ashton already on his way up out of bed.

“I mean, like… tomorrow could be it,” he whispers. “And I don’t want to sleep alone.”

“Band snuggle?” Calum suggests, teasing tone breaking the weight of the atmosphere.

“Band snuggle,” Ashton agrees.

Calum climbs over both of them to Luke’s other side, bracketing him in between the both of them. It’s warm but there’s still something missing and Luke wishes that Michael was here. They shift and get comfortable, arms and hands entwined by the time they’re quiet in the dark while Calum rests his forehead near Luke’s.

“Don’t worry,” he whispers. “Whatever happens tomorrow, we’ll deal with it together.”

Luke nods sharply, not daring to pull his hands away from where they’re neatly tucked to wipe the tears off his face.

 

Michael blinks.

He’s at the base of the stairs with the dirty breakfast dishes on the tray, only crumbs and streaks of yolk left on the plate with only some coffee dregs left in the mugs. His sweatpants and sweatshirt are replaced with jeans and that cream white sweater that smells like Luke, one that he’s worn so often that the shoulders are all stretched out.

He has no clue how he’s gotten here.

He walks into the kitchen with the tray, finding Ashton and Luke doing the dishes and they both turn to look at him. His eyes scan over the kitchen quickly, finding nothing wrong. The stove and the oven are there and the fridge is there and the coffee maker they paid way too much for is still full of a cup or two of coffee. But something still feels off about it.

“You okay, love?” Luke asks.

Michael nods, setting the tray on the counter next to the sink. “Yeah, I’m fine,” he says even as his chest twinges. God, he needs to see a doctor.

Luke leans over and kisses him. He’s wearing glasses. And Ashton isn’t.

“What’s with the glasses?” Michael asks.

Both of them frown as they look at him. “What are you talking about?” Luke asks.

“You’re wearing Ashton’s glasses.”

Ashton frowns and shakes his head. “I don’t wear glasses,” he says, dunking the new dishes into the suds.

“I’ve always worn glasses. Are you feeling okay?”

Michael palms at his chest – it keeps hurting. “Yeah…”

“Go and see if Calum’s out of bed yet, yeah?” Ashton says. “I want to get going soon.”

Luke dries the last coffee mug. Surely they didn’t do the dishes that quickly.

“Okay, yeah,” he says, heading back upstairs and taking a quick detour to the bathroom. He probably fucked up some muscle when he was sleeping the other day and exacerbated it with his fall yesterday, he should grab a painkiller.

He pushes the door closed with his foot, pulling his sweater off and resting it on the towel rack before he looks in the mirror. There’s something wrong with his tattoos but the more concerning part is the giant black bruise about the size of his hand right over his heart that has thin black tendrils winding around his entire body. He doesn’t know if it’s a bruise or if he’s literally falling apart and he reaches up, prodding it and regretting it when he swallows a cry of pain and he has to grip onto the sink to keep from keeling over.

He grabs at his chest, trying to keep his whine low as he sinks to the floor and sits against the door. He realizes now that he’s sweating and he feels like he’s running a fever. He wonders if this is what it feels like to die and he worries that he hasn’t told his parents that he loves them yet and he hasn’t told Luke one last time and he keeps his eyes shut tight. His skin erupts in a crawling sensation and he starts to claw at his chest, trying to quell the uncomfortable itching underneath his skin where he can’t reach.

“Get out, fuck, get the fuck out,” he mumbles. He can’t see it but he can feel it under his skin, pushing and squirming deeper and deeper and he just has to get it out get it out get it out.

There’s a loud banging on the door.

“Michael!” Luke shouts from the other side of the door.

Michael starts and scrambles to his feet, grabbing for his shirt and rushing to pull it over his head. Luke’s voice had a panicked edge to it and that’s never good. “Yeah? What’s happened?”

“Your parents – your dad had a heart attack.”

His previous sentiment about not telling his dad he loved him dizzies him.

“Wh-what?” He nearly slams the door in his face trying to get it open.

Luke is standing there holding his phone, which is displaying a phone call with his mum. He scrambles to take it, wondering where he left his phone earlier if Luke was the one to answer it.

“Mum?” He says, watching the concerned and sympathetic look from Luke.

“Hi, love,” she says, sounding tearful and panicked. “Your father…”

“I know, Luke said,” he says. “Is he going to be okay?”

“He’s in surgery, I don’t know.”

Michael swallows and forces himself to take a deep breath. “I’ll book a flight, I’ll be there soon.”

“It’s at least twenty hours, Michael, how will I tell you if something happens?”

The connection breaks up with a shock of static. “Mum?” He asks. This is horrible, it’s Christmas and his dad is sick.

“I’m here,” she says, voice dampened by the static.

“Okay,” he says, taking another breath. “I’ll buy wifi for the flight or something, you can email me updates or something. Please. I have to be there.”

“Okay, I love you,” she says.

“I love you, too.”

The call ends and Michael looks at Luke with panicked eyes.

Luke grips onto his arm and presses a quick kiss to his cheek. “I’ll book a flight, pack a bag.”

Michael rushes to the bedroom, grabbing their duffel bags and stuffing clothes into the bag with little regard for what belongs to whom. He just stuffs the bags full of clothes and goes to the bathroom, looking around for anything they might need and deciding that _fuck it_ , he can survive off anything his parents have at home.

“Michael, hurry up!” Luke shouts.

He rushes to the stairs, nearly tripping in his haste and he catches himself on the railing. “Did you get a flight?”

“Yes,” Luke says from the bottom of the stairs. He blinks. This couldn’t have happened so fast.

“When does it leave?” He asks, starting down the stairs.

“Soon, we have to hurry.”

Michael steps in something, wet and slimy, and his feet go out from under him as he sits down hard on the wooden steps. He looks at Luke, eyes wide with fear. “I thought the stairs were carpet,” he says.

“What are you talking about? Michael, we have to go!”

He turns and looks behind him at what he stepped in and it’s black sludge, the same shit that collected on his shoulder earlier when Calum touched him. “What the fuck,” he mumbles, his voice shaking. “Luke, what the fuck is going on?”

Luke grips his hand tight and he wasn’t even aware that their hands were clasped together in the first place. His grip tightens considerably until Michael winces and tries to wrest out of his grip.

“Luke?” He whispers, looking at him as he hears his bones creaking.

The stairs are moving, he realizes as Luke finally lets go of his hand and he pulls it to his chest. The step above him splinters and sludge oozes out of it. Michael scrambles up and tries to hurry away from the steps but the step where his feet are is broken and hemorrhaging out the same black, oily pus and he doesn’t want to slip again and the splinters of wood look sharp enough to hurt himself.

There’s a slowly building noise behind the wall next to him and Michael watches in horror as the wall bursts open, picture frames and various treasured awards going flying as waves of black liquid force their way out of the wall. The noise is deafening, like standing near the ocean when the wind is high, and Michael clamps his hands over his ears as the liquid douses Luke, who is standing stock still and just staring at Michael. He’s trapped on the stairs and he can’t get to him, can’t push him to safety.

He opens his eyes as he watches the pus begin to flood their condo, trying to cling onto the railing, but it’s covered in the stuff and he doesn’t know what to do, there’s black sludge everywhere.

Luke opens his mouth, his eyes barren and unfocussed as they loll back into his head and the sound of static picks up again. There’s something else slithering out of the fissures in the walls and the floor, thin vines of plant matter reaching up, wrapping around his calves and snaking their way up his legs. Michael screams, trying to claw them away as the feeling of something _under_ his skin returns full force and he staggers backwards. His foot loses any purchase it could have hoped for and he goes tumbling off the stairs, the plant not supporting him as he falls, much further than he should be, into a vast, empty space of screaming static.

His vision goes white.

He wakes up to his chest twinging painfully and he’s in the driveway of the condo. The weather isn’t as nice anymore and the snow has shrivelled into dirty slush by the side of the road. In the horizon, there’s dark clouds looming and approaching.

“Michael! Hurry up!” Luke says.

Luke is above him, offering a hand and Michael scoots backwards away from him. “No!”

“What are you doing?” Luke demands, hurt in his eyes as he continues to reach for Michael. “There’s a storm coming, we need to get out of here, we need to get to Sydney.”

Michael stumbles to his feet on the icy pavement. “You’re not him!”

“What the fuck are you on about?”

“You aren’t Luke!”

Luke grabs hold of his wrist and Michael braces for pain, prepares to hear his bones being crushed together again but the touch is shockingly gentle. “Mikey, we don’t have time for this. We need to get to the airport. That storm could cancel our flight and you need to be with your family right now, yeah?”

Michael nods in agreement. “What’s happening?” He whispers, terrified. This isn’t what he’s used to and he just wants to be at home with his parents, both alive and well, and not here.

“I don’t know, but you could ruin it all.”

Michael looks at him, looking up into Luke’s eyes as his chest aches. “What?”

“We need to be careful,” Luke says, pulling him to the car. It’s loaded with their suitcases.

Michael gapes at him until they’re settled in the car, Luke in the driver’s seat. The blond turns to him, eyes serious in a way Michael has never seen before.

“I need you to listen,” he says. “You need to promise me. My life depends on it.”

The thought of Luke being taken from him makes his chest ache again as his heart speeds up. “Of course.”

Luke leans over and presses their lips together, hands cupping Michael’s face firmly as he pulls him in closer. Michael is taken aback but he wraps his arms around Luke’s waist, avoiding the console between them as he reciprocates and Luke nudges his lips apart, easily deepening the kiss. He feels a little lightheaded, like the first time he made out with a boy behind the school and left the encounter with his knees weak and his head spinning. Luke pulls away and peppers a few pecks on his lips before he looks him in the eye.

“No matter what happens, you can’t wake up,” Luke whispers.

Michael’s brows knit together. “What?”

“You can’t leave me,” Luke whispers, a desperate edge to his voice. “Promise.”

“I could never leave you,” Michael says.

Luke brushes his hair from his face and kisses his nose, smiling too wide to be natural, showing off too many teeth – how many teeth does a person usually have anyway? “Is that a promise?”

Michael nods and smiles reassuringly. “Promise.”

 

They’re woken by Karen and Daryl in the morning, groggily untangling all the limbs that knotted together during the night. No one offers to cook breakfast this morning, though, aware that they need to eat something, Ashton offers to buy them all breakfast on the way and they sit through a McDonald’s drive-thru line up.

None of them say anything as they eat. None of them say anything as they drive. Karen and Daryl are silent up front and Calum, Ashton and Luke are silent in the backseat, squished shoulder-to-shoulder since the backseat wasn’t made for three boys each measuring above six feet.

When they get to the hospital, they can’t find anyone. They run into a group of fans who awkwardly ask for photos and they decline, instead offering to sign autographs on anything, which leads to another fight to find a Sharpie while the fans ask why they’re here. Ashton coolly tells them they’re just here for a regular checkup before they give them hugs and try to find anyone who will tell them about Michael. They finally get a nurse to page Dr. Harris, Dr. Bartlett and Dr. Braginskaya.

Dr. Harris meets them, looking much less peppy as he leads them to an office.

“What’s going on?” Karen asks.

“Nostalgia therapy was unsuccessful,” he explains.

Luke is unsurprised. “So, you gave him the blockers and the other shit, yeah?”

Dr. Harris nods, his face grim, which is the part that’s really scaring the shit out of him. “Yes, we started nightmare treatment. He wasn’t waking up on his own so we gave him opioid blockers and a controlled dose of LSD,” he says, swallowing thickly. “It should be working…”

Luke digs his teeth hard into his lip, tries to remember the feeling of getting it pierced so he’s a little bit detached from this conversation.

“But?” Daryl squeaks.

“But… we were right about the Black Mercy. It’s doing everything it can to keep him asleep. It’s quadrupled its poison output in the last few hours,” he looks legitimately sorry to be saying this and Luke doesn’t want to hear what’s next. “His body is starting to shut down and the plant won’t let us close enough to remove it…”

 _No_.

“At this point, we’re just trying to make him comfortable. We don’t have any more time.”

“How long does he have?” Ashton asks.

Luke feels like the floor has dropped out from underneath him and his breath is picking up speed.

“At the rate he’s going, two hours. Maybe three.”

There’s silence again. “There’s nothing you can do?” Luke breathes.

Dr. Harris shakes his head. “Not in the amount of time we have left. There’s no way to remove the plant without putting others at danger or killing him immediately.” He clears his throat and takes his glasses off. “I’m really, really sorry. We did everything we could.”

“Can we say goodbye?” Ashton asks, his voice breaking.

“Ash…” Calum whispers.

Luke looks away from them, focussing instead on the filing cabinet in the corner with a tiny potted cactus on it.

“Yes, we can arrange that for you,” Dr. Harris assures.

“Alone?” Ashton asks.

“Come with me,” Dr. Harris says, standing up.

The door shuts behind them and he can hear Michael’s parents dissolve into tears and he tries to focus on the cactus and he tries to count the spines on it. He stands up abruptly, knocking the chair backwards as he heads to the door.

“I’ll be right back,” he mumbles.

“Luke,” Calum says.

Luke moves through the halls of the hospital quickly, trying to escape Calum and he eventually breaks into a sprint, finding the private waiting room they were put in before.

He collapses against one of the chairs, covering his eyes with the palms of his hands as he lets out an anguished cry into the sterile silence of a hospital. Calum touches his shoulder, sitting next to him and letting Luke fold himself into him while he shakes and sobs and makes the kind of helpless noises that someone suffering makes. Calum just rubs his back rhythmically while Luke pushes his face into his shirt.

“Luke,” Calum soothes after a while, his hand brushing over the crown of his head to gently ruffle the hair there. “Luke, please, stop crying. There’s still a chance and you know Michael, he won’t go down without a fight.”

Luke shakes his head and he resists the urge to start beating lamely at Calum’s chest with his fist like a toddler having a tantrum. “He’s not going to wake up,” he whispers, not so much crying anymore as breathing heavily and whimpering. He ran out of tears.

Calum adjusts his grip on Luke, pulling him closer and letting Luke cling to him, his hands fisting in his shirt as he holds onto the fabric. After a moment of just holding on, Luke realizes that Calum is crying, too.

“Luke,” he manages. “Luke, there’s only a few hours left. And we can’t spend it here.”

Luke sniffles and buries his face in his chest.

“We have to – we have to say goodbye, okay?”

It starts a whole new wave of tears and Luke shakes his head. “I can’t do this, I can’t do this.”

“You have to.”

Luke shakes his head. “I can’t say goodbye,” he sobs, pulling away to look Calum in the eye. He’s seen all of them cry at one point or another but he still isn’t used to it and he isn’t used to crying like this, like they’re losing everything. “I can’t do it, Calum, I love him.”

Calum gingerly brushes Luke’s hair away from his face. “I know, Luke, we all do.”

He sniffles, tries to get a good breath but he’s hiccupping now. “No, no,” he says, shaking his head. “No, not like that. I never told him, I never said it to him like this, I didn’t tell him about it but I’ve loved him since fucking Norwest and – and now he’s going to be dead and I’ll never have told him that I love him.”

Calum takes a deep breath and Luke is doing everything he can to not slump back into his chest. “Luke, do you mean it?”

“What? Of course I fucking –”

“No, do you mean it or are you only saying it because he’s dying?”

Luke pulls one of his hands away to scrub at the tears and snot on his face. “I mean it. I’ve had a crush on him forever b-but there was never a good time to tell him and then the band and…”

Calum squeezes his shoulder. “You need to tell him. I think it’s all he’s ever wanted to hear.”

Luke looks at him before the words sink in and he dissolves into a new wave of tears.

Calum hugs him to his chest again. “Can you do that?”

Luke nods jerkily. The thought that all these years, Michael has felt the same, rips him apart inside because if he’d just sucked it up and talked to Michael, then maybe none of this would be happening. Maybe he missed out at his one shot with Michael and that was it, now he was going to die and Luke would never know for sure if he felt the same.

Calum mumbles something at the same time Luke hiccups and it’s barely audible but Luke catches it.

“I can’t let this happen.”

After a trip to the bathroom and a few more minutes of helpless sobbing, they return to the others, now sitting in a nearby waiting room, pictures of flowers and scenery on the walls. Ashton sits with his gaze straight ahead, looking vaguely pale and it’s such a difference from his normally bright disposition. Dr. Bartlett is standing there and she offers a weak smile as they approach.

“It’s good to see you two,” she says. “Mr. Irwin is done so the rest of you can go in now if you’d like.”

Luke glances over at Ashton as Calum takes the chair next to him. “How’d he look?”

Ashton shuts his eyes and shakes his head, leaning into Calum’s touch. He looks about the same as he did when he got appendicitis.

“Would any of you like a moment alone with him?” She asks.

Luke nods. “Yeah, please.”

She nods. “Come with me, you’ll need a key to get in.”

He follows her down the hall to Michael’s room, where she hesitates before swiping her key card.

“I have to warn you that it’s very, very disturbing,” she says. “He’s bleeding quite a bit and we have him on transfusions but he’s also got the LSD in his system…” She looks at him, levelling their gazes. “It’s nightmare fuel,” she says frankly.

Luke swallows and nods. “I’ll be fine,” he says, though he isn’t sure. He isn’t so great with blood.

“If you need anything, I’ll be out here,” she says.

He nods and steps into the room after she unlocks the door.

He approaches slowly and he tries to think about her warning, tries to think of all the creepy shit he’s seen in horror movies and harden his mental resolve but nothing prepares him for actually seeing Michael through the incubator.

His entire body is ghostly pale with a sheen of sweat covering his skin while faint tremors run through him, rattling the bed. The Black Mercy has completely enveloped his chest in a network of long tendrils that pulse and quiver with every laboured breath Michael takes. The tubes in his nose are still there, the ends caked in blood that dribbles out of his nose slowly and Luke notices his ears are bleeding as well, the liquid collecting in his hair and matting it together. His fists are clenched at his sides and his face is stuck in a pained grimace, eyebrows pulled together as he writhes on the bed.

Luke feels nauseous. “Mikey,” he whispers, resting his hands on the glass and leaning his head onto it. His breath creates puffs of fog against it and he feels like he isn’t close enough to him. “Mikey…”

He has so much to say. He’s known Michael for so long, through pretty much everything important in his life and he doesn’t know where to start. “I didn’t want to believe it when they told me you were dying… But I can see that… that this is it.”

Luke has never known anyone to die except distant relatives his parents told him he’d met but he couldn’t recall. He doesn’t know how to do this.

He sniffles and he can’t stop touching the glass, trying to get closer because the gloves are removed. “You can’t even die normally. You have to everything all fucking punk rock and get eaten by some alien plant,” he mumbles, wishing Michael were conscious to laugh with him about this. “You don’t even know you’re dying…”

Luke glances over at the clock. He’s already wasted an hour between his fit in that waiting room and his useless chatter here.

“I’m wasting so much time and you’re dying and…” he sniffles, curling his hand into a fist. He wants to feel Michael’s skin against his and hold his hand one last time, while he still has a heartbeat. “We’ve been together through like, everything. That terrible history teacher we used to make fun of and when I started dating Aleisha and when we broke up and you always pestered me when I did homework on tour. We got famous together and I was there that first time you dyed your hair and you talked me into getting my lip pierced and you even held my hand and you didn’t make fun of me at all.”

Luke swats at the tears on his eyes. He’s shocked he can even still manage to cry. He leans forward again, whimpering because he knows that he’ll never learn how Michael’s lips feel against his own.

“Michael, fuck, you’re a better guitarist than I am and your voice – what are we going to do without you? We’re supposed to tour the new album in a few months, you can’t die. You’re my best friend and we need you and I need you.”

He stands up and stares down at Michael’s pained face, looking down at his chest where there are steady streams of blood sliding down from where the tendrils penetrate his skin. Luke wonders if the transfusions are helping at all.

“Mikey,” he chokes. “Mikey, please, you can’t die, I don’t know what I’m going to do without you…” He slams his fists down onto the incubator. “You can’t die! Wake up, dammit! You can’t fucking die because…” His energy leaves him and he slumps back down into the chair beside his bed, pressing his hands into the glass.

“You can’t die because I haven’t told you that I’m in love with you yet.”

He sobs into his hands as the door opens.

“Mr. Hemmings, I’m sorry to interrupt,” Dr. Bartlett says quietly. “But Dr. Braginskaya’s doctors must begin preparations.”

Luke sniffles. “Preparations?” He mumbles.

“For when he dies,” she says.

Luke scrubs at his face and nods.

“We need to have proper containment in here for when it detaches. The last thing we need is it attaching to someone else.”

Luke nods. “Can I ask a favour?”

“Absolutely,” she says, nodding.

“Can we be here? When he dies?” He asks softly. “We’re – we’re his family. He should have his family with him when he goes.”

Her face softens and she nods. “Anything else?”

“Can I touch him? His arms and his face are mostly clear, it shouldn’t be too bad.”

“I’m not sure, Mr. Hemmings, it could be very dangerous…”

“Please,” Luke mumbles. “I just… I need to do it.”

“I’ll see to it that you can, yes.”

Luke nods and looks back at Michael while Dr. Bartlett exits, leaving him alone with the sounds of the heart monitor and the clock that’s ticking too loud.

Only two hours left.

 

Michael doesn’t know where in London they are and Luke is driving too fast. There are no other cars on the road and there’s no worry of crashing, unless Luke careens off the road, which at this speed is a distinct possibility. Michael isn’t quite sure where their condo in London was in relation to the airport but they’ve been driving forever and Michael’s chest hurts with worry, a symptom he knows can come with anxiety when he walked to the hospital after school a day of particularly heavy workload. He also knows that he’s been in pain for the past few days.

Michael is tossed into the window as Luke makes a sharp, sudden right. He glances up through the sunroof and all he can see is static and he thinks to ask if Luke can see it too but he doesn’t want to give any chance to an accident. The clouds are moving too fast, starting to blanket over the city and Michael worries because they’re so, so black; he wonders if pollution is really so bad here that the clouds are deep, deep black like this.

Big, black rain drops begin falling from the sky as Michael spots the airport in the distance and Luke doesn’t flick on the windshield wiper. His hands are white-knuckling the steering wheel and he’s never once signalled a lane-change, which is completely unusual because Luke is such a safe driver normally. The rain is black and oily and it begins collecting on the windshield to the point where Michael can’t make out much of anything and he worries he’ll die before he gets a chance to go home to his parents. He’s so glad there aren’t any other cars on the road.

Luke pulls up to the airport. “Get out and get your ticket.”

Michael unbuckles his seatbelt with shaking hands. “Aren’t you coming?” He doesn’t want to do this alone, even though Luke’s driving terrified him.

“I have to find Calum and Ashton, ask one of them to house-sit,” Luke explains.

He blinks. “Can’t you call them? Luke, please, I don’t –”

“Go, Michael!” Luke bursts. Michael flinches back, unused to hearing Luke speak like that to anyone, really, but specifically him.

“Luke –”

“You have to be with your family! Don’t be useless!”

“Luke, please, I need you.”

“Shut up! You’re always so fucking needy and you always have been! You’re always taking, never giving! You’re a shitty excuse for a boyfriend.”

Michael nearly feels the sadness and disappointment that pool in his stomach, let tears burn in his eyes, when his vision wipes and static overtakes with a painful pressure in his skull. He grabs at his head and his chest feels as though someone is stabbing a hot knife through him until he comes back to everything, Luke’s arms around him as he sniffles into his chest.

“I’m so worried, Mikey,” he mumbles.

Michael wraps his arms around Luke, too, to savour the feeling of the boy in his arms after what he said a few seconds ago and to quell the pain in his body. He tries to make a sound, tell Luke he loves him, but no words come out.

“Go, okay? I’ll be here soon, send me updates if you get any.”

Michael nods and pecks Luke’s cheek before he gets out of the car and grabs his bag, heading into the hauntingly silent Heathrow airport.

It’s always bustling but there’s no one here: no fans begging for his photo and screaming into hysterics the moment his attention falls on them, no crucial person behind the counters to print off the baggage tags. Simply no one. It’s empty.

Michael immediately feels put off and he prints off his ticket with one of the machines and he stumbles his way through the empty security gates, the metal detector staying silent as he passed through. The shops are all empty and he’s liberated in the fact he can walk ten feet without being stopped by a fan, though the silence is eerie and he wants to offset it with something but he worries he won’t be able to speak and he worries that it’ll echo.

He comes to one of those big windows that looks out onto the runway. The sky is stark black and it’s making the fluorescent lights glare down and Michael steps closer to the window to get a good look at the weather, see if it’s still raining those weird black raindrops that could cause his flight to be cancelled. He presses a hand against the glass and peers out, watching a very familiar car speeding down the runway.

It’s Luke.

Michael bangs his open palm against the glass in a futile attempt to get his attention and make him stop because he’s accelerating and he doesn’t know what to do if Luke gets hurt, too. The inevitable happens and the car, speeding too fast, catches and rolls before it bursts into flames as Michael screams inaudibly.

He pulls his phone out of his pocket and he doesn’t even have service. He bangs again on the window, wishing he could break it and run to Luke since he isn’t that far and if there’s no one in the airport then there shouldn’t be any pilots and he runs no risk of being run down by an airliner. He leans against the window, he can see Luke’s body in the fiery wreckage, somehow, and he’s mangled and bloodied and Michael’s chest aches fiercely, enough to make him double over with a silent whine escaping his lips.

He can hear Luke. “Why won’t you save me?” He says. “Why don’t you love me?”

Michael stands up and slams harder against the window, which must be made to withstand a fucking bulldozer.

_I do! I love you!_

When he tries to scream, all that comes out is a vaguely mechanical whine. He slams his entire body into the window, wishing he could break through it and just get to his boy, save his boy.

The wind kicks up and slams a sheet of the black rain onto the window, smearing his vision and Michael takes off running to find any other observation floor he can.

He sprints down the empty hallways, knowing that he’s never been much for running and he was always picked last for team games in school, but he has to try anyway and there’s a large amount of adrenaline aiding in his efforts. He finds another window, but it’s covered in the sludge, too, and the only thing he sees, even when he cups his hands over the glass, is either his own reflection or it’s nothing.

Michel slams his fist into the wall, feeling boxed in like he’s surrounded by paparazzi and fans and he just wants to escape.

“Michael.”

He spins around, seeing that Calum is there, unscathed and dry from any rain. He wants to speak but he knows he can’t and he wants to be glad.

“You okay?”

Michael points to the black window, wanting Calum to understand that Luke isn’t okay and they have to get him help.

Calum just smirks. “What is it?” He asks, like he’s speaking to a dog. “What is it, boy?”

Michael opens his mouth to speak and nothing but a high mechanical whine comes out, just like before.

“Aw, cat got your tongue?” Calum pouts, condescending. He reaches out and pinches Michael’s cheek. “I know just the thing. Wanna see something cool?”

Michael pulls away from his touch, stumbling away with the intention of running away because this isn’t Calum.

“Michael, look!”

He turns around and Calum is on fire, sparks flying off him.

“Isn’t this so cool?”

His skin bubbles and blackens and Michael turns away before he can watch Calum burn. He glances back to watch skin peel back from his cheeks and expose bones and he stumbles away, starting to run down the empty hallway.

“Aw, you don’t want to stick around for the show?”

Michael doesn’t look back. Calum’s laughter follows him down the corridor.

He passes endless shops and restaurants, all deserted and dark, and he swears that he’s going in a circle because he’s seen the same clothing store again and again. He walks for seemingly hours, trying to find his way back through security and back outside to find Luke, or see if help arrived and if he can get to the hospital.

It hits him that his dad is still in the hospital and he doesn’t know what to do. His boyfriend, or his dad. He has a ticket for a plane but he doesn’t know what to do.

He collapses against the wall to catch his breath, pulling his phone out of his pocket and placing his hand over his chest to feel his heart which is still pounding too fast, physical exertion or otherwise. He takes a deep breath, looking at his phone and he has no signal. He tips his head back against the cold wall and tries to take another breath as panic settles in his stomach. He can’t even tell his mum that he can’t make it and he doesn’t know what to do except sit here and panic.

Michael looks at his phone again to check for an update from his mum and when he clicks over to turn his data on, the screen turns to snow. He throws his phone at the wall, irritated, and he watches it bounce off a door and he listens to it crack when it hits the floor.

The door.

He hasn’t seen that door.

He stands up and walks over, wondering if it will lead him outside and he rests his hand on it. It’s just a door. He turns the handle and it opens into what looks like a security room from what he’s seen on binge sessions of _Border Security_.

Michael follows the plain hallway, feeling more enclosed and he flinches when the fluorescent light above his head flickers. He’s in some horrible fucking video game, obviously, and he wants to sit down and cry until something changes but he can’t very well put his life on pause and leave the game to rot forever. He has to apply video game logic to this and that’s to keep moving forward. He takes a deep breath and ignores the creepy flickering light, wishing he had the thought to pick up a weapon of some sort at one of the abandoned shops so he would feel a little less vulnerable.

“Creepy, innit?”

Michael turns around, balling his hands into fists in preparation to fight. Further down the endless hall, a charred, smoldering figure saunters easily over to him. It’s Calum, his peeling lips formed in a smirk.

He stops a few feet back from Michael, frowning. “You can speak, you know. You’re allowed.”

“I can?” Michael squeaks. Relief floods him. At least his voice isn’t gone.

“Yep,” he says. “I mean, this is all in your head, right? You could do whatever the hell you wanted.”

Michael frowns. “How do I get out?”

Calum steps closer. The skin of his cheeks is flaking off, and there’s no blood but there’s just blackness underneath the skin, circulating and pulsing and looking uncannily like the rain that fell earlier. “Dunno, but a good start would be to get out of this hallway.”

“And – and go outside? But there was all that oily shit!”

Calum beams. “Aw, you’ve lost it.”

Michael runs his hand through his hair and tries to ignore how more skin sloughs off his face whenever he moves it.

“But y’know, Ash and Luke are at the end of this hallway. In the room on your left.”

Michael nearly gives himself whiplash looking at Calum. “Luke? He’s okay?”

Calum shrugs. He smells of campfires and that time his mum forgot about the bread she’d put in the oven and the house filled with smoke. “Dunno. I’m just a figment of your imagination, Michael, I don’t know anything you don’t know.”

Michael just stares, watching in silent horror as Calum’s body begins to fall to dust.

He raises his wrist to look at his watch, which is no longer there and is instead replaced by his sludge-covered bones. The sludge drips off slowly and he frowns. “You’ve only got an hour left before you can’t escape at all anymore.”

“What?”

Calum collapses and the sludge slithers off his bones and up Michael’s legs. He shrieks and starts sprinting the other way to try and escape it but he trips over his own feet, slamming his head against the floor.

He comes to in a room that’s much too hot and he’s lying on something hard and uncomfortable. His head aches and his chest smarts and he opens his eyes to nothing but darkness around him. He rubs his eyes and turns every which way, trying to find any source of light and wishing that he hadn’t gotten rid of his phone. He feels around, because there isn’t much else he can do, and he crawls until he finds a hallway, his hands touching the walls and coming back wet with what he assumes is the same black fluid.

“God, this is fucked up,” he mumbles, standing when he sees a small crack of light by the floor ahead of him.

He walks as quickly and as steadily as he can for someone who recently sustained a second head injury, trying not to bump too much into the wet walls. He rests his hands on the wood door when he comes to it, locating the handle and opening it into a room set up, he guesses, for interviews with travellers.

Ashton sits at the table, reading a book with his glasses perched on his nose. He looks up at Michael and smiles. “I was wondering when you would come to,” he says. “Come here, let me get you something to eat and let’s get you cleaned up.”

Michael follows him to sit on one of the uncomfortable plastic chairs, shutting his eyes as Ashton wipes a damp cloth over his forehead. It feels like that time he got sick when he was ten and his mum spent the day home from work with him, dabbing at his face with a damp cloth.

“There you go,” he says, tossing the towel away. “I don’t have many options for you so I hope soup is okay.”

He puts down a bowl of chicken noodle soup still in the can, the edges jagged from where it was open, and he sets down a spoon.

“Dig in.”

Michael doesn’t think there’s something very appetizing about cold chicken noodle soup but he dips his spoon in anyway. “Where’s Luke? And Calum?”

“Oh, they’re fine.”

“No, Ashton, _where_ are they?”

“Calum went to get Luke,” Ashton says, nonchalant about the entire affair.

Michael drops his spoon into the can. “Luke is okay?”

Ashton nods. “Oh, he’s fine, fine,” he singsongs, grabbing some paper towels and wiping up what sloshed when Michael dropped his spoon.

Michael frowns as he eyes him warily. From a door on the other side of the room, Calum enters, his body complete again, and Luke, skin grey and bloated, stumbles in. Michael stands to go over to him, until he notices the worse damage.

Luke’s left arm is dangling, shoulder unhinged, and his foot is twisted all the way to the side. There are a few burst pieces of skin, like boils, which are leaking black pus and the overwhelming stench of it all makes Michael gag.

Calum frowns at him and Ashton approaches.

Michael sinks down onto the ground, trying to pull his knees to his chest and curl up as best he can. “This isn’t real, this isn’t real, just wake up, wake up, wake up –”

Ashton roughly grabs his hair and forces him to look up. “Shut up,” he growls.

Luke stumbles over, looking as though he might fall to pieces any second. “You promised, you promised you’d stay,” he whines, sounding like he’s on the edge of crying.

Calum goes over, kneeling in front of him and assessing him. “You _can’t_ wake up. You said you would stay. You promised Luke.”

Michael brings his hands up to cover his face. He wants that dinner with Luke back, where they made pea soup, and not this, he wants anything but this.

Calum grabs his hands, forcing them away and Michael manages a panicked sob. He doesn’t understand any of this, it doesn’t make any sense.

Calum forces his fingers into Michael’s mouth and he still tastes of smoke, like that time Michael tried a cigarette. His nails scrape at the back of his throat and Michael can’t hold back another gag, his eyes watering against the taste of smoke which is infiltrating his lungs as well. He tries to scratch at Calum’s hands but he just gets his hand forcing itself further down his throat and harder.

Michael twists and writhes, trying to fight his way out of this because Calum’s entire first is in his throat and it fucking burns. Ashton grabs his arms and Luke grabs his legs and even though one of his arms looks useless, it isn’t and it grips his ankle tight.

“Baby, don’t leave me,” Luke pouts.

Michael tries hysterically to twist his way out of this as Calum’s hand slowly finds its way down his throat. It burns like he’s eaten something too hot and too large to comfortably fit down and he whines against Calum’s hand, which gets him a slap.

“Stay still!”

A horrible squirming sensation explodes in his chest as Calum’s entire arm reaches down his throat and Ashton giggles from somewhere above him.

His vision flashes white as crippling pain courses through his body. He can feel something coming up with Calum’s hand, hot and forcing its way through his lips as Calum pulls it out and he splutters, tasting metal and bile.

“See this?” Calum beams.

Michael forces his eyes open. He’s losing consciousness.

In Calum’s hand, quivering too fast, is his own heart, covered in blood and black sludge.

“This is _mine_.”

 

Luke sits in the waiting room with the rest of them. He can’t look at them except in fleeting glances, seeing Calum and Ashton’s hands wrapped together because Ashton is still pale from seeing Michael. He can’t look at Daryl and Karen, he just can’t do it. He found it difficult to watch parents who lost a child speak on the news, separated from them by the TV and probably his phone, but to watch the two of them, right in front of him, is heartbreaking.

It’s like a bad smell. He can’t get away from it.

Luke glances up at the clock, counting down the seconds with an annoying _tick, tick, tick_ , counting down the seconds until Michael’s heart will stop. He can’t think about it too much but the noise is distracting him from everything else while at the same time reminding him of how little time Michael has left.

Luke thinks about attending his great-granddad’s funeral when he was young – like, eight – and how it didn’t make much sense to him and how it was really just long and boring and time he could have spent playing video games. It’s the only one he’s ever been to and he hoped it would be the only one he would go to for a very long time.

No such luck, apparently.

Dr. Harris emerges from Michael’s room after a while. Luke stopped counting the minutes. “We’re ready,” he says softly. “Dr. Bartlett said that one of you requested the case be removed so it is, for now.”

They all stand, each pair of them clutching onto each other’s hands. Luke’s hands are cold.

“Come in,” he says.

They file into the room. The incubator lays on its side on the far side of Michael’s bed, several long hoses attached to it and the bulk of the machines that were hooked up to Michael are gone, leaving behind just the vitals monitor and the respirator. Several blankets have been draped over Michael’s legs and there’s a pillow underneath his head, collecting the blood that drips from his ears.

Michael’s face is tight and drawn, scrunched up in pain while he shivers, even though every inch of exposed skin is covered in sweat.

“How long has he been shivering like this?” Luke asks, taking a seat in one of the folding chairs set up for them.

“For about a half hour,” Dr. Braginskaya answers. “We believe it’s a side effect of the LSD.”

“He looks so scared,” Karen whispers, nearing the bed but not touching Michael.

Dr. Braginskaya nods. “We do not believe he’s aware of his surroundings, or that he’s dreaming anymore. His vitals are so low that his brain is focussing on nothing but keeping him alive. It’s likely just the drug working through his system.”

Luke sits opposite Karen and Daryl, reaching a hand up to stroke at Michael’s hair. It’s damp with sweat and his skin is hot like he’s got an impossible fever but it makes him feel better because it feels like Michael’s hair: a little dry from all the dyeing and messy from sleep.

No one says anything while Karen takes one of Michael’s hands, stroking her thumb over his tense knuckles and sniffling. The heart monitor beeps and the respirator hisses with every compression, adding to the dark atmosphere. Luke finds the sounds a little comforting because they’re proving that Michael is still alive.

“His condition may turn at any moment,” Dr. Braginskaya explains. “We must be ready to replace the case. For that reason, we cannot give you any privacy.”

Luke rests his hand on Michael’s unmarred cheek, his finger brushing against his eyebrow piercing. He sniffles as Michael unconsciously turns his head towards Luke’s touch and lets out a tiny whimper. He’ll never see Michael smile again, not in person, and he bows his head as he leans over to press a kiss to his hot forehead.

“ _Please_ , Mikey,” he whispers, inaudible underneath the hiss of the respirator.

One of the machines begins to beep frantically and Luke jumps back like he’s been shocked, looking at Dr. Braginskaya with wide, panicked eyes. Michael’s body has gone taut, the shivering ceased.

“What’s happening?” Daryl asks.

“His heart is seizing,” she explains as she and a team of doctors and nurses swoop in, trying to move Luke away from his spot right next to his head. “We need to get the case on him immediately.”

Luke keeps his hand pressed to Michael’s cheek, trying anything, even if it’s hopeless, to keep him alive. “No.”

“Please, you must give us space,” Dr. Braginskaya pleads.

“No! None of this is right!” Calum shouts from near the foot of the bed. He climbs onto the bed, looking at Dr. Braginskaya. “Bring him back.”

“Calum –” Ashton says.

“Bring my best friend back,” Calum repeats. “It’ll kill him anyway.”

Luke stumbles back as the beeping fades to a steady, shrill tone and as Calum grabs the rubbery mass on his chest and, with a disgusting wet squelch, tears it off of Michael’s chest, oily pus exploding from several of the severed tentacles. The mass begins to shudder in Calum’s grasp before it shoots out a new bout of tendrils into Calum’s hands, making him fall off the bed with a scream.

The doctors swoop into action, shoving everyone out of their way as they grab defibrillators and as another goes over to Calum and positions him so he’s on his front with his arms stretched out in front of him, the tentacles taking root in his shoulders as he starts to lose his grip on consciousness.

A gunshot explodes at the same time they jolt Michael’s body with electricity. Two bullets later, the Black Mercy detaches itself from Calum and one of the doctors kicks it towards the case, flipping it right-side up and trapping it beneath the Plexiglas. A pair of nurses sit on top of the case to keep it weighted down while another two descend on Calum, getting him onto a stretcher as he loses his grip on consciousness, going completely limp. Ashton follows them out at a run.

“Clear!”

Luke watches in horrible anxiety as they try to restart Michael’s heart, each jolt running through his otherwise-still body.

“Clear!”

The heart monitor begins to beep again, too fast and horrible as Michael jerks upright, his hands clawing at his heaving chest while Luke takes a few disbelieving steps forward. Michael’s eyes fall on him and go wide while Luke cracks a tearful smile.

He starts to scream.

Michael struggles backwards, falling off the bed and toppling over the heart monitor and respirator as he scrambles to press himself against the wall. He claws at his chest, trying to get the remaining tentacles out from under his skin but all he manages to do is spill more blood and black fluid onto the floor. His chest heaves between screams and he tears the IV out of his hand, sinking to the floor and fisting his gore-caked hands into his hair as he buries his face in his shaking knees.

“Wake up, wake up, wake up!” He cries hoarsely. His knuckles are white with his grip on his hair and Luke worries he’ll tear hair out.

Doctors rush over to him as Dr. Braginskaya heads over to a cabinet and opens one of the drawers. “The drugs are still in his system, he’s likely still hallucinating,” she explains.

The doctors haul Michael to his feet and he screams, twisting and straining against their grips as he spills more blood to the floor. He kicks and writhes while they try to drag him to the bed.

“Stop!” Luke says. “You’re hurting him!” He rushes over, forcing the doctors aside against any better judgement and Michael immediately drops down to the floor, covering his face with his hands and sliding back against the wall.

“Wake up, wake up, go away, go away.”

Luke kneels down in front of him. “Michael?”

“No, no, no, no, no.”

“Mikey,” he whispers, reaching and taking Michael’s wrists gently. He resists, trying to pull away, but Luke keeps his grip firm. “Mikey, can you hear me?”

Michael slowly tilts his head up to look at Luke with his impossibly huge eyes. He slowly relaxes as he blinks and nods clumsily.

Luke smiles tearfully. “Hey,” he whispers.

“Luke?” Michael whispers as Luke moves his hands to cup his cheeks, the tentacle still curled in his cheek causing an unfamiliar bump.

“Yeah,” he smiles, trying his hardest not to cry. “Yeah, it’s me.”

Michael pitches forward and wraps his arms around Luke and immediately he can feel the warm fluid soaking through the front of his shirt. He lets out a loud sob and Luke wraps his arms around him, stroking his bare back and trying to ignore his own tears sliding down his cheeks and the smell of blood.

Dr. Braginskaya appears next to them with a needle and Luke distracts Michael while she sticks it in his arm, trying his best to support his weight when he slumps over, his tears finally stopping.

The doctors lift Michael away, putting him on a stretcher and taking him away. Luke looks down at his front, which is soaked with blood and black fluid and he sighs because he’s lost two shirts that he likes in the last week.

He looks over at Daryl and Karen, both of them crying and Dr. Harris looks at them from where he is by the case, trying to weigh it down and turn on the knobs of the tanks attached to the hoses.

“He’ll be in surgery now,” he assures them. “Go and get cleaned up.”

“Is he going to be okay?” Daryl asks, the three of them starting their way towards the door.

“Yes, you should go and find your friend. We have a little weed to kill.”

 

They find Calum’s room in a restricted portion of the hospital, after Luke has disposed of his shirt and cleaned himself up and Daryl has kindly lent him a hoodie. They enter quietly, finding Calum with both his arms bandaged, tired and irritated as he blinks at the door while Ashton tries to help him drink some water.

“How’s things here?” He asks, taking a seat next to Ashton as he silently thanks the world that his band is in one piece.

“Oh, good,” Ashton says. “They removed the tentacles and he’ll be a little sore but he’ll be fine and they’ll let him go home once he’s a little less doped up.”

Calum whines. “I’m _not_ doped up.”

Ashton pats his hand. “Sure, darling.”

“I am _just_ fine,” he says, his words slurring.

Luke smiles as he glances around the room. It’s got space for another bed and he hopes they bring Michael here once he’s out of surgery.

“How’s Michael?” Ashton asks.

Luke looks at him and fiddles with his lip ring. “They think he’s going to be okay. They brought him back and he was still tripping out and he nearly broke a doctor’s nose but he’s in surgery now.”

Ashton lets out his breath and slumps back in the chair in relief while Calum blinks at him. “Michael’s my best friend,” he mumbles.

They all chuckle and Karen takes one of Calum’s hands. “What you did was incredibly stupid,” she says softly.

“Well, _he’s_ stupid and I just had to use his own tactic against him,” Calum says. “’S like, you can never argue with him and he’s so stubborn and… what are we talking about?”

She smiles, squeezing his hand gently. “ _Thank you_ ,” she says softly. “Without you, he wouldn’t be alive.”

Calum smiles and squeezes her hand back.

 

It takes hours and uncomfortable naps beside Calum, who teases them about being the only one lucky enough to get a bed, until the doors to the room open again and they bring Michael in. His face is relaxed and his breathing is steady, a stark contrast from what he saw this morning.

Dr. Bartlett and Dr. Harris follow the nurses in who check on the IV drips and mark things down on the chart.

“The surgery went very well,” Dr. Bartlett reports, smiling even though her eyes betray her exhaustion. “He required lots of blood and partway through it he was unable to breathe on his own, but the plant matter is completely removed and we expect he’ll make a full recovery.”

“There will be a lot of scarring,” Dr. Harris explains. “It’s fairly nasty under all that gauze, it looks like he got in a fight with a bear. There is some plastic surgery that could be done, we can refer him to a surgeon if he’d like.”

Luke sits back and feels himself relax for the first time since he found Michael on his lawn.

“When he wakes up, he may be in a great deal of pain,” Dr. Bartlett says. “We’re going to keep him for at least twenty-four hours to monitor his condition and if he remains stable, he will be able to go home after that. He may need supervision though, as he might not be able to tend to his injuries.”

Karen nods. “He’ll be well-taken care of.”

“One last thing,” Dr. Bartlett says. “Based on what we saw earlier, it is very likely that the plant and the drugs have had some effect on his mental state.”

Dr. Harris gnaws on his lip. “We can also refer to him to a therapist. But he may be paranoid and jumpy in the next few days and he may be a little aggressive at times.”

Luke thinks about that time he saw a therapist during the last tour and he just kind of wants to climb into bed next to him and _sleep_ for the first time since this all started.

The doctors explain a few more medical things, assure them that they can stay the night if they’d like before they shake each of their hands and retire for the night.

“We should get some rest,” Daryl says.

Luke doesn’t need to be told twice. He pulls the sweatshirt tighter around himself and for the first time in a long time, sleeps soundly.

 

Luke wakes up after spending the night slouched in his chair and his neck aches but it’s nothing a few Advil won’t fix once he’s eaten something. He stretches and tries to fix it, sighing when his spine pops and sagging back into the chair. Michael is still asleep in front of him and Calum and Ashton are curled together on the bed, Karen missing and Daryl is awake on the other side of Michael. Luke rubs the sleep out of his eyes and he takes a deep breath.

“Did you sleep okay?” Daryl asks.

Luke nods. “Yeah, this wasn’t terrible for a place to sleep,” he says softly, trying not to disturb Calum and Ashton. God knows Calum will kill him if he wakes him up.

Daryl smiles. “Thank you for helping him yesterday. He’d have killed someone if you hadn’t stepped in.”

“’S my pleasure,” Luke beams. “I’m just glad he’s doing better. Has he been awake yet?”

He shakes his head. “Not yet. They came in to check on him earlier, but he’s stayed asleep. They figure it’s probably okay, he’s just been drained from the nightmares and things.”

“He looks better,” he says, wishing he could reach out and brush a hand through his hair without disturbing him. It’s been cleaned of all the crud that was in it earlier and Luke is thankful; Michael would have fretted about it stripping the dye or being bad for his hair.

Daryl nods. “Yeah, he definitely does. Can I ask you something?”

Luke nods, fiddling with his lip ring.

“What did you say to him when you were alone with him?”

Luke feels himself stiffen, his fingers spinning the ring a little faster.

“You don’t have to say, I was just curious.”

He shakes his head and takes a breath. “I, uh, I told him I love him.”

Daryl smiles. “Do you think he heard any of it?”

Luke chuckles. “I guess we’ll have to wait for him to wake up to tell him.”

“Tell me what?”

Both of their heads snap over to Michael, his eyes opening and unfocussed, blinking slowly. It’s confirmation that Michael is okay and relief floods over Luke as he listens to rustling behind him, Calum and Ashton waking up.

Daryl stands and presses a kiss to Michael’s forehead. “I love you,” he says. “I’m going to find a doctor to check on you and your mum.”

Michael nods slowly, bringing up his unencumbered hand to rub at his eyes. He turns to Luke once the door is shut behind him. “Guess I missed that meeting, huh?”

His voice is weak and scratchy the way Luke recognizes from having spent so many early-mornings next to him and Ashton nearly trips climbing off Calum’s bed, taking the time to help him out as well as Calum tugs his sleeves down to cover the bandages.

Luke takes his hand while Ashton gets him water, helping him adjust the bed up to a sitting position. Ashton hands the paper cup to Luke, who guides Michael to drink.

“How do you feel?” Luke asks once Michael has emptied the cup.

Michael shakes his head. “Not great,” he says, trying for a weak smile.

Ashton shows him the pain pump that the doctors located for them last night in case Michael woke up. It would give him a fresh wave of narcotics to help with the pain. Michael lays a heavy thumb on it and shuts his eyes, taking a deep breath.

“Why am I here?” He asks when he opens his eyes, looking down at his hand with the IV in it. Sitting up, the hospital gown is falling a little lower and it’s showing off the tops of the bandages on his chest.

“You don’t remember what happened?” Calum asks.

Michael tenses and shakes his head tersely.

Luke squeezes his hand, leaning closer. “What’s up?”

“Nothing.”

Luke pouts. “Liar.”

“I don’t remember anything,” Michael says, the edge of his voice carrying some snappishness.

Luke relents as Dr. Harris enters with Daryl and Karen in tow. He smiles. “It’s nice to see you awake, Mr. Clifford,” he says. “How are you feeling?”

“Like I got hit by a truck,” Michael mumbles, shutting his eyes again in obvious pain.

“On a scale of one to ten, how is your pain, one being annoying and ten being excruciating?”

“Seven?” Michael guesses. “Eight?”

Dr. Harris marks something down, nodding. “Are you nauseous?”

“Extremely.”

He checks his vision and the feeling in his toes and hands before scratching more things down on his chart. “Any more hallucinations?” He asks.

Michael frowns. “What?”

“We gave you LSD.”

“You gave me _what_?”

“LSD,” Dr. Harris says again. “Lysergic acid diethylamide?”

“I know what it is,” Michael snaps. “ _Why_?”

“We wanted to induce nightmares in an attempt to sever the connection between you and the plant.”

“You guys _did_ that? On _purpose_? Do you know what I fucking saw?”

The heart monitor picks up speed and Luke takes Michael’s hand again. “Hey,” he says.

Michael clenches his jaw and looks away while Dr. Harris grabs a stethoscope and presses it to Michael’s chest. He winces and his breath picks up speed while the doctor listens before pulling away and sighing.

“I know what you’ve been through is extremely hard,” Dr. Harris says. “And I’m sorry. But please, these outbursts could be fatal for you. Your heart stopped twice, you’re very lucky to be alive. For right now, please try to remain calm, your heart is still very weak.”

Michael sits back and takes a deep breath, shutting his eyes tight again. “I feel sick,” he mumbles.

Dr. Harris grabs a wastebasket and hands it to Michael. “Just in case,” he says softly.

Michael’s face turns just after he’s gotten a grip on the wastebasket and he vomits into it, Karen going over to rub at his back and sit gingerly next to him on the bed. He heaves and spits into the wastebasket when he’s done, keeping his head down and Luke touches his arm.

“You haven’t even eaten anything solid in days,” Dr. Harris says. “Was it just bile?”

Michael shakes his head, taking deep breaths. “Some greasy black shit,” he mumbles.

He sighs and marks it down on the chart. “It’s probably from the plant,” he says. “We’ll keep you overnight to make sure you’re okay. Mr. Hood, you can go home any time.”

Calum nods and Michael lifts his head. “What are you here for?”

“Saving your life,” Calum says.

Michael frowns.

“We’ll explain later,” Ashton promises.

“For now, I really want a shower,” Luke says, standing. It feels wrong to be leaving Michael, but he knows that his parents would like time alone with him and he needs to go home and assure his mum that everything is okay.

Michael pouts and Luke leans down to kiss him on the head.

“Yeah, I haven’t changed my clothes since this started. They stink,” Ashton says.

“We’ll be back soon, promise,” Luke says, ruffling his hair.

Michael groans softly but lets them leave without too much grumbling.

Luke gets a cab home and thankfully makes it there without fanfare, finding his keys in his pocket and entering into the quiet house with the noise of the TV on down the hall. He toes off his shoes and he feels disgusting, the soap and water he used to get the remnants of black sludge and blood off his chest not enough. He’s desperate for a shower but he needs to make sure his parents know he’s okay.

He pads down the hall, finding his parents on the couch with the TV on, playing the footie and his dad is rapt while his mum is checking her phone. “Hey,” he says softly.

His mum looks up and sets her phone down, rushing over to wrap her arms around him. “Hi, love,” she says. “How are you?”

Luke nods, snuggling into her grip even though he’s much bigger than her. “I’m good.”

“How’s Michael? Is he contagious at all?” She asks warily, pulling away a little bit.

“No, not contagious,” he chuckles. “He’s much better.”

“What’d he have?”

Luke lets his breath out. He isn’t supposed to tell anyone about it, he reminds himself, even if he wants to and even if this is his mum. “Some really rare condition. He basically passed out and we took him to the hospital and he almost died.”

“ _What_? Why didn’t you tell me?” She asks, reaching to brush his deflated hair off his forehead. Concern is plain on her face and Luke feels bad for not telling her.

“There was no time,” he says softly. “I wanted to but I wanted to be with him.”

She nods and pulls him in close. “He’s okay now?”

“He’s okay now. I’m probably going to stay with him for a while.”

He has a long chat with his parents before he takes a long bath and has something to eat. He texts Calum and Ashton, asking when they’re going back and wondering if he should just curl up in bed for a while and go back first thing in the morning. But it doesn’t feel right so he goes back to the hospital, finding Michael’s room after he nearly gets in an argument with a nurse about whether or not he knows Michael and has access to his room. Dr. Braginskaya leads him back to the room just as he’s verging on hysterics.

Michael’s parents look exhausted and smile when he walks in, leaving to grab something to eat while Luke takes a seat next to Michael. He has his face in a new wastebasket and Luke squeezes his shoulder.

“Been in there since I left?” He asks.

Michael grunts.

“You have to take your head out of there some time.”

Michael groans. “Do I have to?”

“Yes,” Luke says, pulling the cheap plastic out of his hands and putting it on the floor nearby. He tosses a few tissues in an attempt to cover the contents he refuses to look at.

Michael sighs and grabs a tissue with a wince to wipe his mouth one last time.

“Need any water?” Luke asks.

Michael shakes his head. “No, thanks.”

Luke takes his hand and squeezes gently. “Do you want to talk about why you got so pissed off about the LSD?”

The redhead looks away. “Don’t really want to go there right now,” he mumbles. “Or ever. I’d really just like to forget about this whole thing and go back to how things were.”

“Was the nightmare really that bad?” Luke asks, frowning.

Michael shakes his head, fiddling with the blanket. “The nightmare isn’t the part I want to forget.”

Luke bites down hard on his lip as he tries to figure out what to say. “It might help to talk about it,” he offers.

He shakes his head again, more firmly this time. “No. It’s not something that’s ever going to happen and I don’t want to think about it anymore.”

Luke nods, squeezing his hand gently as silence lingers over them. “You scared the shit out of me, y’know,” he murmurs.

Michael looks at him, pulling his hand away to open his arms.

Luke smiles. “You sure?” He asks, worried that he’ll touch one of the wounds on his chest and ruin the whole moment.

Michael nods. “Yeah, I want a cuddle.”

Luke carefully climbs in next to him and they curl together easily, his body finally losing all traces of tension. He turns his head and buries it in Michael’s shoulder, taking it as a good sign when nothing changes and Michael doesn’t hiss or wince.

“Thought I’d lost you,” he whispers, the gravity of actually being in Michael’s arms again making his recovery a whole lot more real. Luke is going to get Calum the best Christmas present ever.

“No way,” Michael whispers, the smile audible in his voice. “It might have been showing me nice things but it would take a whole lot more to take me away from you guys. I’ve gotta stick around to bother you.”

Luke chuckles tearfully. “You dreamt of us?”

Michael bites at his lip and nods, his cheeks turning pink and Luke reaches up to feel his forehead, glad when he doesn’t detect a fever.

“What? You’re blushing.”

Michael sighs. “All of you guys were there, Calum and Ashton and you… But mostly you,” he admits in a low tone.

Luke smiles, brushing a hand through his hair. “You can tell me, y’know, I won’t judge you.”

Michael snuggles close and quietly tells Luke everything, from the ham and pea soup to hanging out with Calum and shopping for Christmas presents. He pauses before he mentions a ring, his cheeks turning as red as his hair until he continues and describes how holes in his memory quickly turned to his dad being sick and black rain and flames and corpses.

Luke leans in when he’s done and presses a feather-light kiss to his lips, taking advantage of the fact he’s half asleep and he smiles when Michael’s eyes flutter shut with a blissful smile on his face. He falls asleep, his head on Luke’s chest, shortly after he gives himself another boost of painkillers and Luke cards his fingers slowly through his hair, smiling.

 

Despite the doctors’ initial optimism about Michael being allowed to go home early, he spends another four days in the hospital, the first spent vomiting up whatever the Black Mercy left behind. The second is spent with a raging fever that lasts until the third night and each of Luke’s visits over those days is punctuated with Michael taking long naps and being almost in tears with how much pain he’s in. Luke tries to hold his hand through it and he tries to stick around as long as possible, even though it gets tedious sitting by Michael’s bedside while he sleeps.

On the fourth day, his fever and his exhaustion vanish and he’s able to choke down some solid food and Dr. Bartlett announces that he’s free to go when he starts to whine about missing his dog and video games. Calum and Ashton offer to bring the car around to the back, just to avoid any fans or paparazzi, and Luke is stuck in the room with Daryl and Karen while Dr. Harris demonstrates how to properly clean Michael’s wounds.

His chest is a web of stiches and Luke isn’t looking forward to seeing what it will look like when it’s healed, the scar tissue built up and he worries about how they’ll explain that when fans inevitably see it. He changes the bandages, an affair that makes Michael grit his teeth in pain while the doctor gently wipes at the wounds and explains to them how to properly apply antibiotic cream and he rattles off a laundry list of horrible things that could happen if the sutures are improperly treated.

Luke is thoroughly disgusted with the human body by the time Ashton brings back a bag of clothes for Michael, handing it to him. “Calum is waiting with the car for when you’re ready,” he says.

Dr. Harris glances at the bag of clothes. “Would you like any help changing?”

Michael frowns. “Nah, I think I’ve got it.”

Dr. Harris smiles and pulls the curtain shut.

Luke listens and, not even a minute after the curtain has been shut, Michael yelps and swears. It carries on for a while longer before he sighs. “Can someone help?”

Luke steps behind the curtain, helping Michael get his shirt on before they get him into a wheelchair and stop by the pharmacy for a bag full of prescriptions on their way to the car. Calum is driving and he gives Michael a big, toothy grin as everyone else piles in carefully, trying not to hurt Michael as Karen gets his seatbelt on.

The drive home is quiet and peaceful and Luke is all the way in the backseat, wishing he were closer to Michael and he could hold his hand or something because he can’t even make conversation with him back here.

Ashton carries him inside and they play video games together before dinner, doing their best to help Karen and Daryl while giving Michael all the attention they can. They have dinner together, Michael whining while he has chicken noodle soup and the others have spaghetti. They play Trivial Pursuit after they’ve all cleaned up and Luke goes upstairs with him after a while, his heart set on staying the night even though Michael doesn’t really know about it.

Michael tenses as they go past the stairs and Luke takes his hand as they ascend, remembering the part of his story where the stairs burst open with black sludge, and he leads him to his room. He helps him out of his clothes and into a pair of soft flannel pants before he helps Michael into bed and grabs the supplies to wash his sutures.

“Do you want a shirt? For the night?” Luke asks, going to the bathroom to grab him a glass of water to take all of his prescriptions with.

Michael shakes his head and reaches for the supplies and the cup of water. “Nah, I’ll be okay. Thanks for helping me get changed.”

Luke makes a face. “You think that’s all I’m here to do?” He asks, handing the cup of water over but none of the other supplies.

Michael frowns. “I can probably do it myself, there’s nothing on my back.”

“You’d mess it up,” he says, his point punctuated as Michael yawns. “See? You’re exhausted, you’ll pass out.”

Michael chuckles and lies back on the bed, putting his arms behind his head. It showcases the tattoo on his upper arm and the network of bandages over his chest, which Luke thinks is probably better than a network of tentacles. Luke carefully tears the bandages off and balls up all the gauze, tossing it in the wastebasket which he notes has quite a few tissues. Gross. He puts the washcloth – clean, he sniffed it – and he gets it soaked before he wrings it out so it’s only damp like they said to do. He swipes it gently over the first wound, up around his neck and Michael shuts his eyes, taking a sharp breath.

“You okay?” Luke asks.

Michael nods. “Just hurts a bit.”

Luke presses a comforting kiss to his forehead before he goes back to watching himself work, making sure he gets every wound, the skin red and irritated. Michael hisses when he applies the antibiotic cream but he recovers when Luke puts fresh bandages on.

“Are you going now?” Michael asks.

Luke shakes his head. “We’re all staying here tonight. We thought about going out to the granny flat but we thought that in case you needed something, you should stay here.”

“You’re taking the couch then?”

“Are you crazy? If you wake up in the night, do you really want to go and bother your parents?”

Michael shrugs. “Where are you staying?”

“With you, dumbass,” Luke says, clearing up the cleaning supplies. When he returns, Michael is blinking up at him and continues while he changes. “I suppose you don’t have anything that would fit me. Are you okay with me sleeping in just my boxers?”

Michael nods and Luke climbs in next to him, snuggling into his side and pressing a kiss to his ‘to the moon’ tattoo.

“Guess we have to talk,” he whispers, the phrase making his own heart rate accelerate. He hopes this doesn’t stress Michael out to the point he has a heart attack.

Michael sighs. “I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I didn’t want to tell you that I like you just in case you didn’t like me back and I wanted to talk about the dream and I hoped it wouldn’t make you uncomfortable or anything. We can forget about it and I’ll stop liking you and it can all go back to normal.”

Luke frowns and snuggles closer. “Don’t be presumptuous,” he says. “I would have told you sooner, you know I would have. But I was uncertain about how I felt.”

Michael draws a breath and in the dim light from just his lamp, it looks like he’s tearing up but Luke thinks it’s a trick of the light.

“But after… after you almost died, I’m certain.”

Michael is silent for so long that Luke has to remind himself that Michael dreamt of buying a ring for him, that the Black Mercy worked on showing him what he wanted most in life.

“I just want to be certain about what you’re saying,” Michael whispers.

Luke breaks into a smile. “I’m saying I want to be with you, idiot,” he murmurs, sitting up closer so their faces are close.

Michael grins. “I’m nervous,” he whispers.

“Relax,” Luke mumbles, still smiling too widely to facilitate kissing. “It’s just me.”

Luke leans in and presses their lips together hesitantly, still worried that he’ll get into all of this and change his mind, mess it up and ruin the band, but he relaxes and forgets about it the moment their lips connect, melting easily into the kiss. Michael carefully leans up and cups his cheek, pulling him in a little closer and Luke mindfully avoids the bandages on his chest and does his best to cuddle closer. It’s everything that Luke has wanted since he was fifteen years old and he thought that Michael hated him and he keeps moving their lips together slowly, leading the kiss he never thought he would get to enjoy before he runs out of breath and pulls away. He keeps their faces close, almost bumping their foreheads together as he giggles.

“God,” Michael breathes, his eyes fluttering shut as he reaches up to press his palm into his heart.

“You okay?” Luke asks, giggles replaced with concern because what if he hurt him?

Michael nods. “Yeah. Just wanted… I wanted to make sure that was real.”

Luke smiles and pecks his lips again. “Of course it’s real.”

“So, are we an item then?” Michael asks quietly.

Luke nods. “Yep. Now the entire band is taken… to each other.”

Michael chuckles and wraps his arms around Luke. Cuddling with the knowledge they don’t need to keep it platonic makes him relax a lot more into his grip, reaching up to play with his hair. “I’m sorry about like, hating you.”

“Can’t believe you remember that,” Luke teases, affection masking any genuine insult.

“Of course, do you know how many ‘chats’ Calum had with me about that? God, he was relentless. He asked me one time if I was just a dick to you because I had a crush on you and I got so defensive and then I realized that I totally did have a crush on you. That’s so cliché, isn’t it? But I really did and the first person I told was Calum and he told me to buck up and tell you but you were taken so I had to settle for waiting. And then there was never a good time and I always thought that I’d mess up or something.”

Luke kisses him again. “You’re the biggest idiot, I liked you since I was fifteen. We could have been dating for like, four years, but you’re a thick-headed idiot and you didn’t see me mooning over you all the damn time,” he says, each syllable punctuated with a bubble of a laugh.

Michael laughs. “I feel like I could cry.”

Luke rests his head on his shoulder. “You can if you want. I’ll never mention it to Calum or Ashton.”

“Nah,” Michael says. “Kinda just want to sleep with my boyfriend.”

Luke laughs and leans over, clicking the lamp off. “I could make you cry.”

“No, you couldn’t.”

“Totally could.”

“Prove it, then.”

Luke snuggles into his chest, presses a feather-light kiss over his heart. “I love you, Mikey.”

He feels Michael tense a little, his breaths becoming more measured. Luke reaches up in the darkness and touches his cheek, feeling something wet and he laughs, using both hands to wipe under Michael’s eyes which are shining in the pale moonlight.

“Dammit, Luke,” Michael sniffles. “I love you, too.”

 

They end up postponing some interviews and shows due to Michael’s illness, giving them all more time to recover from what happened by making their break a little bit longer. At their next interview, the lady interviewing them who does a very good job of sounding peppy while she looks exhausted asks about Michael being sick, which is awkward but they do their best to play it off. Michael gets his sutures removed and the wounds fade into scars, which look just a little less nasty than they did when they were red and pink.

At Christmas the year after, they’re stuck in England until the New Year and Michael and Luke laugh as they rent a condo for the month. Michael takes the time to find one that’s vastly different from what he saw in his dream and they easily make a mess out of it, especially when they put up their Christmas tree and they spill pine needles everywhere. It tips over in the middle of the night, scaring the shit out of both of them and they find half the baubles on the tree are shattered against the hardwood. They clean it up together at three in the morning, both of them in nothing but their boxers and they end up shivering and warming each other up with drowsy middle of the night sex.

On Christmas morning, Ashton and Calum come over and they open all their presents together while sitting on the floor in front of the fireplace. Luke leans back against the couch once the floor is covered in wrapping paper and he’s got a new sweater from Ashton on and a beanie from Calum.

“We should make breakfast,” Ashton says, stretching to reach his tea with his head in Calum’s lap.

“Wait, there’s one more present,” Michael says, reaching between the loveseat and the wall to pull out a large box, about the size of the toaster oven in their kitchen, which he hands to Luke.

Luke takes it and gives Michael a look. “Seriously? Who’s it from?” He asks, wondering why it hadn’t been put under the tree with the other gifts.

“Me, of course,” Michael beams.

Luke rolls his eyes, tearing the wrapping paper off to reveal a plain cardboard box. It has no clues to the content of the box and Luke tears the cardboard to open it.

Inside is another box, wrapped in different wrapping paper. It fits snugly and Luke rolls sighs around a laugh as he unwraps that box to find another box. There are ten boxes fit inside of each other and Luke groans as he opens the last one, finally finding that the last box is full of tissue paper, holiday themed.

“I swear to God, if there’s another box in here,” Luke mumbles as Ashton and Calum laugh. Their laughter got harder and louder with each passing box and Luke has found it fairly amusing as well but he was drowning in a growing mountain of wrapping paper and cardboard boxes that were full of _other_ cardboard boxes.

“Just take the tissue paper out,” Michael laughs, his voice a little high.

Luke shoots him a look as he pulls the tissue paper out of the box, finally finding a small, black velvet box underneath the first layer. “Oh my God.”

He glances at him again, tenseness falling over him when he sees Michael smiling nervously, his cheeks red.

“What is it? If it’s a dildo, I’ll punch you for making him open that in front of me,” Calum says.

“It’s a ring,” Michael says quietly and the same hush falls over Ashton and Calum.

Luke reaches in with shaking hands and opens the box slowly. Just like Michael said, it’s a ring, the shine off the side of it making it seem like it’s staring up at him.

“Luke,” Michael says softly. “Will you marry me?”

Luke smiles. “I don’t get you on one knee?” He teases and Michael looks like he might fall apart from nerves. “Of course, idiot,” he whispers.

Michael scoots over, kissing his cheek and sliding the ring onto his finger. It feels like everything he's ever wanted as he kisses Michael full on the lips and Calum and Ashton aw behind them. 

**Author's Note:**

> i hope you enjoyed that! the title was kinda a play on the nightmare treatment they did with michael and also how luke obviously doesn't want michael to die and yeah!  
> please let me know what you think with kudos, comments or come chat on [my tumblr!](mochalou.tumblr.com)


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